<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On 30 Jan 2011, at 07:42, Tim Harding wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">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.</blockquote><br></div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><br><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Gill Sans'; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; ">--</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; ">Paul Robinson</span></font></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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