I've been doing some research and have been wondering how a company like privacy.com are able to generate VISA card numbers on the fly? I was looking at the VISA API and there's nothing publicly that I can find. Do they have some sort of special arrangement. I'm based in the UK and am Looking to build a service with a similar functionality, but can't seem to find any material on doing this.
Stripe also offer a service, but exclusively for US based customers. Are there any laws or regulations that I might be overlooking which prevent this being done in the UK?
VISA API
https://developer.visa.com/apibrowser
https://privacy.com/
https://stripe.com/gb/issuing
https://cards.emburse.com/pricing (These guys piggy back off stripe's service)
They probably use a service from virtual card providers. There are many, example: eNett is kinda popular with online travel agency https://www.enett.com/ They will provide you an API to create card with limit, expiration date, etc...
Related
Context
Me and my team are developing solutions to allow merchants with an online store to more easily deal with in store payments.
At the moment we are also considering the option to develop our own POS terminal integration (based on off-the-shelf EMV L1&L2 Certified rebranded terminals) to give a more coherent user experience to our customers.
On our online solution we support recurring payments using Stripe as our payment gateway therefore we would like to extend this option to physical stores as well.
Of course we could make it possible in the same way we do for online customers but we would like to make the payment experience as similar as possible to the one customers have when purchasing a one time payment product.
Questions
Can a POS terminal setup recurring payments?
Maybe through some trickery that allows to authorize a payment on the spot but capture it in a second moment?
End if it isn't possible and we have to rely on Stripe for this:
Is it legal to capture from an ordinary reader (without special specifications) information as Card Number, Card Holder end expiration date from a card magnetic stripe or other medium to prefill those fields?
I'm not talking about storing those information of course, just reading them to more easily add this card to Stripe.
Thank you in advance and any quality material or alternative suggestion is welcome.
A general answer is that it is possible to initiate original transaction over POS channel and issue subsequent transactions in another (like recurring ecom). The original transaction needs to perform strong cardholder authentication and its details (Transaction ID / TraceID from authorization response) have to be indicated in subsequent authorizations.
What you are describing is referring to features and services offered by one of the companies. You should refer to their support for answer if they support it and what are conditions to do it.
I understand how to extract order information from the MWS get_report function but nothing related to the business or the advertisement reports.
My intention is to periodically extract amazon ad related information(clicks,CTR...) and also business reports( sessions, buy box...). Is this even possible?
Anything you'd be able to get would be listed here as a report type enumeration. Out of the things you've asked about, the only possibility that I'm aware of is buy box information. There is some of that in the Products API but the best place is to subscribe to the AnyOfferChangedNotification which gives real time pricing updates with buy box information.
I'm looking for some feedback from entrepreneurs or developers that have used either Chargify or Recurly to handle their recurring billing.
More specifically, I sell a hardware device that works in unison with a companion application and charge a subscription for the functionality of the companion application. I sell both b2b and b2c. Thus, I need a recurring billing platform that can handle a single unit purchase as well as a 10-20k wholesale purchase and be able to track quantities sold. I've noticed Chargify lacks the ability for me to track quantity. Further, we have highly targeted, customized landing pages on HubSpot and would need the two platforms to integrate nicely.
Has anybody had experience with either of these platforms? What do you like and dislike about the functionality and capabilities? Which do you recommend based off what I would need it to accomplish? Alternatively, is there a different platform that you would recommend?
Regarding "I've noticed Chargify lacks the ability for me to track quantity." - Chargify is able to handle this with what they call "components." Your use case is very common and definitely doable via Chargify.
I'm working on a project where we collect payments from users using credit/debit/PayPal payments.
The service is taking payments from users on behalf of a 3rd party organisation.
Once we take the payment, minus fees, we want to transfer the amount to the organisations bank account.
For now, what we can do is pay the organisation using Online Banking BACS bank transfer.
But I would like to know if there is a way to do this automatically using an API.
If we need to somehow register the 3rd parties bank account details before making transfers, this is fine.
We just want to automate the whole process, since at the moment the transfer is a manual step.
Are there any gateways or APIs I can use for this? In the UK?
As this is still un-answered I'll throw my hat into the ring.
For the benefit of non-UK users, the UK has a central clearing system called Bacs, which is run by the major banks in the country. However, companies can also makes submissions directly to that clearing system, by using Bacs Software.
There are a number of companies that sell on-premise and online services/APIs that allow you to send money directly via Bacs (and collect Direct Debits).
DISCLAIMER: I currently work for a software company (Bottomline Technologies) which sells a Bacs API - I won't mention the product name and to see alternative companies you can simply Google for 'bacs software api'
Hope this helps
You are going in the wrong direction. You should talk to payment processors (which may or may not include your bank) about the business considerations, which probably are more important than the technological considerations. Generally you can expect something somewhat reasonable that you will (after fiddling with it enough) be able to convince to work. It doesn't matter whether this involves some sort of api library, soap calls, or other communication method.
If you honestly consider having the technological considerations more important than the business considerations, then just go with Paypal and don't write your own shopping cart stuff at all. This is easier to use and will do more of the heavy lifting for you, but which will also probably charge you more.
Once you create a real shopping cart and start handling payments yourself (i.e. taking in CC information and sending it to a payment processor), you start getting into a mess of legal and technical concerns involving PCI compliance and the like, which will apply regardless of your choice of payment processor*.
*This is US-specific, but I bet the UK has something similar.
It would be very useful to have feedback on the various API and services that let you bill the customers, so it's possible to compare :
Security;
Quality of API;
Commercial reliability;
Number of languages that can use it;
General usage of them;
Ease of set up;
Economic price;
Technical price.
I thinking here of course of PayPal, Google Checkout but bank credit card based systems as well.
Braintree (and to some extent, other lesser payment gateways)
Pros
You're in complete control of the billing system
You can do more complex payment setups
Widely supported for multiple programming languages; ActiveMerchant support
Some of the best support you'll ever see for e-commerce
Cons
You probably have to deal with PCI DSS security compliance
Potentially a lot of extra work (which may very well still be worth it)
Google Checkout
Transaction Fee: 2.9% + $0.30
Pros
Very low transaction processing fees
Fantastic if you're already using Google for advertising
Google handles a lot of the messy stuff involved in billing, like chargebacks
There's now support for subscriptions (in beta though)
Cons
Google's API is different enough from other systems that you usually have to use a library specifically designed for Checkout (e.g., no ActiveMerchant support)
Paypal
Transaction Fee: 2.9% + $0.30
Pros
Widely understood API; tons of stuff available for dealing with it
Essentially supported by everything
Cons
Lots of people are very vocal about not wanting to do business through PayPal due to bad experiences
Neutral
Tends to be popular with the young adult demographic who don't have credit cards and with eBay users
Amazon FPS
Transaction Fee: 2.9% + $0.30, lower for bank accounts and balance transfers
Pros
Probably your best bet for micro-transactions
A good choice for payments for physical goods
Cons
I don't know enough about the system to say for sure
If you want to accept credit/debit card payments online, you're going to need two things:
an Internet Merchant Account (a business bank account which can accept such payments; there's usually quite a bit of business compliance, risk and anti-fraud attached, but if you're a serious business with an existing business account, talk to your bank)
a Payment Services Provider (who provide you with, for example, an API or a hosted checkout solution, and who act as the go-between for your web site and your IMA, which will typically only provide very limited options)
There is, of course, a fast growing trend of alternative payment services; PayPal, Envoy, MoneyBookers, Neteller, uKash, etc. Those are definitely worth exploring, because they tend to provide a certain degree of risk-free/guaranteed payment, and they dramatically widen the numbers of customers you can reach - think in terms of people who aren't old enough to have cards, or who aren't able to get them due to debt problems or the like.
Perhaps the easiest combination is to find a Payment Services Provider who can handle the whole lot - set you up with an IMA (or rather, underwrite your risk with a bank so they'll be happier to give you one), provide payment processing services, maybe a bit of fraud protection and risk management on top, chargeback management, and then handle all those possible payment methods, including things like 3D Secure (Verified by Visa/Mastercard SecureCode) which can be a real headache to integrate with.
If you're going to be getting into the business of handling online payments, even if it's just an occasional thing, then you'll need to knuckle down and do a bit of serious research into what you need, what you don't need, and what you're willing to pay, 'cause payment service providers obviously charge for this stuff, and it'll be a serious business partnership.
For once, Wikipedia seems to have an appallingly lightweight list, so you may want to Google "payment services provider".