Hi,
I'm after some advice. Basically, I maintain a website that uses a lot
of php with a MySQL database. I'd like to add the ability of visitors
to pay for a service online using a credit card. What is the best way
of doing this?.

I've looked at Paypal mechanisms but unless I am mistaken, it's
difficult to integrate this in a way that looks like it's part of my
website. Obviously, I don't want to write code that's dealing with
credit card numbers directly - what I need is some form of 3rd party
service that I can use to handle the 'money bit' which is neatly
integrated into moy site.

Can someone give me any pointers?. Any ideas?.

Ta,
Dave

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:49:15 +0100, Dave
<dave_m_moore@post2me.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm after some advice. Basically, I maintain a website that uses a lot
> of php with a MySQL database. I'd like to add the ability of visitors
> to pay for a service online using a credit card. What is the best way
> of doing this?.
>
> I've looked at Paypal mechanisms but unless I am mistaken, it's
> difficult to integrate this in a way that looks like it's part of my
> website. Obviously, I don't want to write code that's dealing with
> credit card numbers directly - what I need is some form of 3rd party
> service that I can use to handle the 'money bit' which is neatly
> integrated into moy site.
>
> Can someone give me any pointers?. Any ideas?.

AFAIK (I just asked this very question, this might be country specific
though) the credit card companies have some serious demands about
infrastructure of your network & safety measures. Also, it costs quite a
lot of money to do this 'in house'. Offcourse, you could try to integrate
a PSP interface into your website and just fake the entry using cURL or
the like, this however is not allowed by any PSP as far as I know. I
usually just use a PSP my contractor can live with, with hopefully some
nice possibilities of color schemes/logo/banner. It saves a lot of time,
headaches and money.

The redirecting to an outside PSP is not really a problem for me, as for
most payments here in Holland, I allready use something called iDeal which
redirects people directly to their bank (and back on completion). Most
clients are accustomed to it, and I've seldomly encountered problems with
people not trusting the 'outside' PSP.
--
Rik Wasmus

On Jan 24, 7:49 am, Dave <dave_m_mo...@post2me.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm after some advice. Basically, I maintain a website that uses a lot
> of php with a MySQL database. I'd like to add the ability of visitors
> to pay for a service online using a credit card. What is the best way
> of doing this?.
>
> I've looked at Paypal mechanisms but unless I am mistaken, it's
> difficult to integrate this in a way that looks like it's part of my
> website. Obviously, I don't want to write code that's dealing with
> credit card numbers directly - what I need is some form of 3rd party
> service that I can use to handle the 'money bit' which is neatly
> integrated into moy site.
>
> Can someone give me any pointers?. Any ideas?.
>
> Ta,
> Dave

I personally would never pay directly on a website that doesn't use a
well known third party merchant, (unless its a large well known site).
Have you seen the cost of SSL certificates? As Rik said the cost of
doing this in house is expensive.

I would recommend spending a bit of money on getting a developer to
integrate a third party merchant with your website (just find someone
who has done it before, they all work in the same way).

And another bonus is merchants generally accept all fraud damages so
if someone scams you they lose the money not you.

Flamer.

On Jan 23, 6:49pm, Dave <dave_m_mo...@post2me.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm after some advice. Basically, I maintain a website that uses a lot
> of php with a MySQL database. I'd like to add the ability of visitors
> to pay for a service online using a credit card. What is the best way
> of doing this?.
>
> I've looked at Paypal mechanisms but unless I am mistaken, it's
> difficult to integrate this in a way that looks like it's part of my
> website. Obviously, I don't want to write code that's dealing with
> credit card numbers directly - what I need is some form of 3rd party
> service that I can use to handle the 'money bit' which is neatly
> integrated into moy site.
>
> Can someone give me any pointers?. Any ideas?.
>
> Ta,
> Dave

Dave - integrating PHP with PayPal at a basic level is very easy, and
just requires at set of URL's to be maintained.

If memory serves me right, when I did the integration, there were also
methods available to make it look like it's still your site, i.e.
embedding PayPal into your pages.

This wasn't a problem for us, as we had no concerns about our visitors
going off to PayPal, which returns them back to a landing 'Thankyou'
page on our site anyway.

Rob.

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:49:15 -0800 (PST), Dave
<dave_m_moore@post2me.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

>I've looked at Paypal mechanisms but unless I am mistaken, it's
>difficult to integrate this in a way that looks like it's part of my
>website.

Paypal IPN is what you want I think.
Your site communicates with PayPal in real time and a script on your
server receives authentication (or not!) from PayPal.

Quite a learning curve.
or you can use one of these products to make your life easier:
http://www.withinweb.com/
(we use PHP-IPNMonitor successfully))
--
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