[LRUG] Recurring Payments and subscriptions

[Paul Robinson]

On 30 Jan 2011, at 07:42, Tim Harding wrote:

> For what it is worth, I don't think you need to "build your own billing system" to get started with PayPal standard recurring payments. There's a pretty simple Instant Payment Notification API that you can implement to understand when to turn on / off someone's right to use the system. You can then rely on PayPal to look after the recurring billing and they have a (pretty awful) system for dunning and the like.


I've had numerous problems in the past getting PayPal to turn recurring billing on. You need to pay for their Website Payments Pro account, which is not a simple transaction: it's pretty much a full merchant account application, and the bar they ask you to jump over is relatively high. You need to have been trading for 3+ years with them, and have a reasonable trading history with them on their standard package before they'll really consider you, in my experience.

If somebody came up with a decent recurring billing platform that worked for the majority of UK businesses and start-ups, they would certainly find a great deal of custom. ALL the current solutions out there have considerable pain attached to them.

Easiest at the moment? Chargify -> PaymentExpress -> Barclays. Start with getting the Barclaycard Merchant Account up, then the Payment Express account, and then finally Chargify. Then, there are some lovely APIs and Ruby libs to get you rolling.

--
Paul Robinson



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