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PayPal ALternative

Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 1:30 pm
by supermike
I've had a bit of trouble with PayPal with my last client. I couldn't set up a BuyNow button that would properly connect back to the website's transaction confirmation page (the one where we pass it information and it then tells us the order status). I tried the two web techniques that PayPal provides and both failed. I also found the sandbox as complete trash -- it timed out often and generated system errors, asking me to try again. In the end, we used the button scrape technique where you get a BuyNow button, scrape out its posting stuff, put your own code in there to collect an affirmative on the transaction, and then send them on to PayPal. Then, we hold the transaction as pending on our site until the email from PayPal comes in confirming the order. That's not the desired approach, but will work for now. It just is lousy that we have to use manual interaction with emails and a pending transaction queue in the admin interface on my client's website.

So, I'm looking around for what are generally accepted as the PayPal alternative. It would be great if I could get a good deal, and have something that gives us instant payment verification with no manual email interaction, and which also has a sandbox. Oh, and another requirement I have is that I need it to accept European (BP or Euro) and USA payments. If anyone can recommend something that I can interact with our PHP site, I'm all ears.

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 3:53 am
by Chris Corbyn
WorldPay.

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 10:43 am
by supermike
Chris Corbyn wrote:WorldPay.
Hey, thanks! :)

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 1:54 pm
by supermike
I found this handy WorldPay class on freshmeat.net.

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 5:52 am
by timsewell
http://www.moneybookers.com/app/ Moneybookers looks good.

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 10:05 am
by supermike
Chris Corbyn wrote:WorldPay.
I looked into WorldPay. It's expensive. Here's the rates:

$399 USD setup fee
$50 USD per month
(3.25% - 5.25%, depending on transaction currency type) + $0.50 USD per transaction

They do have test accounts, however, for where transactions can be sandboxed.

They have a stodgy application process, though -- unlike PayPal.


Evidently they're a good enough deal for SitePoint because they use WorldPay. So, I guess you have to be really rolling in regular transactions to even consider them.

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 9:34 am
by chaos
Revolution Money Exchange looks potentially very good. A lot of people seem to have trouble signing up with them, though. (I suspect too-slick-for-its-own-good-Web-framework overuse.)

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 11:38 am
by supermike
chaos wrote:Revolution Money Exchange looks potentially very good.
If they can deliver what they promise, perhaps they might be a good thing. I noticed that their fees are reasonable and low -- probably to steal away marketshare from PayPal.

I think PayPal got too big for their own good. I mean, the sandbox servers are slammed almost to the point of being unusable. If you don't have a 4MB Internet connection to your house (and mine is just 1.5MB), you might as well hang it up with PayPal when doing any kind of testing -- that's just been my experience. And I imagine that much of PayPal's sandbox madness is from scammers and jerks who have no legitimate reason at all to be on those servers.

Let's hope that RMX (my way of saying revolution money exchange) doesn't fall victim to this problem.

Anyway, I'll be giving RMX a more serious review in the near future and thank you chaos for finding them.

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 2:37 pm
by supermike
Noticed a few things about RMX. It's owned by Steve Case to some degree, and he's the swindler who grew AOL and then got it to buy Time-Warner. So, at least it's got solid backing. Next, it won't let you process more than $1000 a day or $2500 in 30 days in your account. That's sort of okay, but may be trouble for some businesses. Next, I noticed it won't let you handle non-USA currencies. That can be a no-starter for today's economy in America where right now we depend so much on international cooperation and international clients. Last, they talk about merchant support, but don't go into a lot of detail in that unless you sign up.

However, I've emailed them and I hope they can talk about some of this with me.

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 11:31 pm
by s.dot
I use alertpay as an alternative to paypal and IT ROCKS! To go into testing mode (to test ipn scripts) all you have to do is tick a checkbox.

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 12:11 am
by supermike
I looked at the plans for AlertPay:

https://www.alertpay.com/Info/Accounts.aspx

To me, as a business, it seems like the business plan is what I need. So basically I pay no monthly fees, no annual fees, and the current fees are per transaction:

Low transaction fees of 2.5% + 0.25 per transaction

I also love the idea of sub-accounts. So when I form a loose business partnership with another guy and we split equity on some projects, I can use the sub account instead of the main primary account as a security measure for both of us.

I love the fact that they can support payments from many different countries:

https://www.alertpay.com/BankingCountries.aspx
(At least, I hope I read that right because I don't know whether they mean they'll convert USD to this to pay merchants in those countries, or whether they mean that customers can pay in their currencies from those countries.)

In the FAQ (found at the bottom of the home page), they're vague on this credit card spending limit thing for $100USD. Is that per day or per purchase? Does that mean, for instance, that I can only sell $100 worth of products to a customer from my site per day? Seems rather limiting.

CNN gave them good praise.

I've posted my series of questions to AlertPay's staff and I'll report back here what they say as well as my questions.

I'm really hoping that AlertPay is the one for me -- sounds too good to be true.

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 12:18 am
by supermike
scottayy wrote:I use alertpay...
IPN: Does it work reliably with them? I had some problems with PayPal -- I followed their instructions very carefully, downloaded PayPal's suggested script for PHP, hooked up my business account and verified it, then got into the sandbox and created the two required accounts. I then fired the IPN in about 3 different ways, multiple times, and I'd either get no response back from PayPal, or a timeout in the sandbox.

Split Payments: Have you done this with them? For instance, let's say I set up a shopping cart for one of my clients and in the agreement they signed, they agreed that I could take 3% per transaction. Let's say my client is called Ace Widgets. So, the customer coming to Ace Widgets' shopping cart pays money to Ace Widgets and that's all they see on their credit card bill. But when the transaction is processed, 3% goes to me and the rest goes to Ace Widgets. No fuss. No trouble. It just starts putting a trickle of income into my business banking account every month. And if I get enough clients like this who all sign that agreement, I might become a millionaire one day.

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 12:41 am
by supermike
Alertpay question: 1. Can a customer pay more than $100 USD per transaction? 2. Or, is that $100 USD per day per customer? 3. Can this be overcome?

Alertpay answer I just received:

1. Not with a credit card. We have a $100 USD limit per transaction. However, this can be overcome by paying with by bank transfer, bank wire, or certified cheque/money order, but only from these countries:

https://www.alertpay.com/BankingCountries.aspx

2. Nope. $100 USD per transaction. If a customer has, say, 5 items in a shopping cart and each is less than $100 USD but the total balance is, say, $400, then it's the total balance that is considered their transaction. So, in that scenario, a customer would have gone over this amount by $300 by their $400 purchase. So we don't permit that currently. However, if they purchase 5 items in a shopping cart and the total is less than $100 USD, then we permit that. These spending limits are under review, currently, and we'll post more news in the future on our website.

3. Yes. See # 1.

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 3:05 am
by Apollo
I'm also looking around for alternative payment solutions. AlertPay looks OK, but the $100 limit is ridiculous.

We all know that most customers (especially in the U.S. market) just want to pay with credit card, not with bank transfers and whatever. Stating that you support credit card but then forcing them to do a transfer when they go over $100 will just scare away customers and lose potential sales.

Re: PayPal ALternative

Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 10:53 am
by supermike
Yeah, for about half a year now they've been mentioning in their forums that they've been working with their banks to go beyond the $100 USD per transaction thing (when paying from credit card), and it's a bunch of "RSN" -- Real Soon Now.