Paying to another user in the Swift application

Question

I have this problem. I am making an iOS app in Swift that sells custom images and videos. I have my own server, so all media is saved there. But now I have come to the point where I need to make it possible for a user to buy content from another user with a credit card or PayPal account. Other users can be found on the map, they added their payment details to their profile (this is not visible to others) so that transactions can be completed.

I did some research on this topic, and I know that a powerful payment tool in Swift is Stripe . However, as far as I read about this, users can only pay for one account that you register. Basically, they can shop as if they were shopping at a store. But in my case, I have to provide the opportunity to pay another user.

In addition, I need to integrate PayPal . For this, I found APIs like Auth0 and PayPal APIs , but cannot find more information about cross-user transactions.

And of course, there is an In-App Purchases option, but I'm not sure if I can use this in this case, because most of my purchases will be made from a web application.

Can someone please help me by giving some tips on how to move on from here and implement this payment system?

Answer 1

There are several considerations to consider, the three most important of which are: price, ease of implementation, and affordability. I will briefly discuss each point out of 3 possible options:

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stripes

Implementation: Stripe has its own iOS SDK and has a feature called Stripe Connect , which allows you to pay directly between users without having to go through your account, but allows you to take a snapshot of the transaction if you want: https: // support .stripe.com / questions / can-i-enable-my-users-to-receive-payments-from-others https://stripe.com/docs/connect

Price: The strip has an initial contribution of $ 0.3 and takes 2.9% of the total amount.

Availability: Stripe is currently only available in 9 countries and is available as a beta in 15 other countries: https://stripe.com/global

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PayPal :

Implementation: PayPal has its own iOS SDK, but a very fragmented history of SDK libraries depending on how complex the functionality is (which Pryo answer is underlined). Paypal has something called Adaptive Payments that allows you to make peer-to-peer payments: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/products/adaptive-payments/

Price: PayPal has a lot of mixed pricing information (currency conversion, cross-border transfer, etc.), but this is roughly the initial payment of $ 0.3 and another 3.9%.

Availability: PayPal is available in 203 countries / markets worldwide: https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/country-worldwide

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In-app purchase :

Implementation: this money will always go directly to the developer, so this means that you will need to implement some kind of service that takes money from your account to the end user. So, the flow goes: buyer → you → receiver.

Price: Apple will take 30% of the total.

Availability: In-app purchases are available in any country where you could distribute the iOS app.

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Conclusion

• Do not use the in-app purchase option for sales from user to user, it is simply too complicated and expensive of the three options.
• PayPal has a strong brand that people trust and are available in many countries, which makes it a stronger candidate than Stripe, but IMHO I would choose Stripe because of its simplicity and lower price.

Answer 2

If you want to implement fast Paypal , there is already an SDK that you can use to make a simple payment between users:
https://github.com/paypal/PayPal-iOS-SDK

or if you need a more advanced feature, for example (third-party, parallel and copied payments), you can check the old MPL library on Paypal: https://github.com/paypal/sdk-packages/tree/gh-pages/MPL

For purchases in the application, payment can be made only by the owner of the application store, and basically there are no funds for interaction between users. In general, payments to applications are made by the application owner.