Recommendations for setting up recurring billing?

Question

I have little experience setting up online payment systems that accept credit card numbers and then transfer them to the gateway for a one-time payment.

However, now I need to set up a system that can handle automatic re-billing - where the user provides their credit card number and is automatically billed monthly from this point forward.

I am wondering what is the best way to get close to something like this? (I notice that Paypal Payflow Pro has a recurring billing feature, but I don't understand a bit how this works.)

Any tips on the best method / service / gateway for implementing recurring billing? If possible, I would prefer not to keep a local record of credit card numbers for reprocessing.

Thank you (in advance) for your help.

Answer 1

There is an intermediate point between creating your own periodic billing and re-billing in ARB or PayPal Auth.net (both of which have their drawbacks). There are many providers who handle all the details and complexity of recurring billing and simply report the payment to your payment gateway to process at your specified interval.

The most important part to pay attention to is the services for credit card tokens and the support of credit card data portability - this ensures that your customer data is not blocked by the billing provider and that you can take it with you if you choose another provider in future. It also means that these providers store customer credit card information for you, so you can significantly reduce PCI compliance.

Take a look at Recurly (Disclaimer: I manage their client and technical support) and Braintree . Both services will handle your recurring billing, credit card tokenization and support credit card data portability.

Answer 2

Periodic billing is easily processed and uploaded to third parties if your recurring amount is constant (for example, the amount that the user pays never changes in quantity or frequency). Services such as Authorized Automatic Rebilling (ARB ) and Paypal Payflow Pro, recurring billing allow companies to process actual recurring payments, which means you don’t need to store credit card information on your servers or even do something like only a subscription is created through their API.

If your subscriptions will vary depending on cost or frequency, you need to use a service such as Authorize.Net Customer Information Manager (CIM) to create payment profiles for your customers. Basically, you store credit card information on Authorize.Net servers, and whenever you want to make a monthly payment, you inform Authorize.Net about the payment of the amount associated with this payment profile. The disadvantage of this is that you essentially need to create your own subscription system.

Answer 3

Usually you find duplicate billing features in middleware gateways such as Payflow Pro. In this case, it is called by the variation of the API that you use to process the cards. Usually you set the time interval between accounts and perform billing. Usually you check the invoice with a report that your processor sends you every month. In some cases, the payment gateway will send you a notification that the billing has been completed. You still have to coordinate payments with the reporting processor, because sometimes notifications do not work.

Canceling re-billing is another API call.

If your gateway does not have a recurring feature, you will obviously have to set up billing yourself. This, of course, leads to the storage of map information, etc. In this case, you usually tell the processor that this is a recurring transaction (which the gateway will do for you), so you get a discount on transaction fees.

Answer 4

First, let's look at the above expression "... tell the processor that this is a recurring transaction ... so you get a discount on transaction fees." The true cost of processing credit cards is the percentage and fee for each item based on the type of card presented (and some other factors that I will not delve into here). The fact is that for a wholesale price plan, the price will be the same, regardless of whether it is repeated or not, because there are no special rates for “repeating” the exchange. But I was distracted.

"Any recommendations on the best method / service / gateway for implementing recurring billing?" Do not store credit card information, no matter what. You cannot afford responsibility. The right choice depends on several factors.

Regarding credit card portability, did anyone go to Wells Fargo / First Data and get the data? (Braintree ISO / MSP). I guarantee that this will not be the case no matter what, so I would focus on the right long-term solution, and not on the exit strategy, although it will certainly weigh.

Here are the questions you need to answer: How many transactions per month? For very small volumes, maybe a few hundred, select paypal pro. Easy to get in / out.

Are people more likely to pay with consumer cards or credit cards? Optimize sharing is important if business cards. (CenPOS automatically optimizes the transaction for minimal exchange qualifications, paypal and authorize.net do not)

What methods does my customer accept payments? do you pay online only? Phone bookings? Mobile payments (special events or retail)? Choose a gateway that meets all their needs.

Do you need to charge on certain days, that is, from 1st to 15th? Or anytime? If on certain days, how do you erupt? Check the response to gateway flexibility.

What happens when a card expires? What happens when a transaction is rejected? Who will need to see payment details for customer service? How will they be able to access it?

Identify your needs, then find out which ones match them. For recording, CenPOS is the most reliable solution, but may require additional steps for integration, as they are newer for e-commerce. Disclaimer: I was a business user of paypal and authorize.net, probably for a decade, and more recently, CenPOS. I am also a reseller of authorize.net and a direct agent of CenPOS.

Answer 5

Just the heads-up on Payflow Gateway Recurring billing: Their instant payment notifications (IPNs) are a fantastic feature, but only apply to their legacy APIs. At the moment, ONLY the WAY to be notified by PayPal of a successful (recurring) payment transaction is carried out upon request. You will need to maintain a schedule to find out and submit an individual request for each scheduled periodic billing transaction, one at a time. PayPal will not notify you if:

• The deal is approaching
• Transaction has occurred
• This transaction was successful.
• This transaction resulted in an error.
• Credit card nearing expiration
• There was a dispute.

... etc.

In my opinion, this makes their service useless.