views:

252

answers:

3

We are currently trying to implement a payment provider in zaypay for paying for services using sms or by calling a number. We already have google checkout and paypal working for regular payments but zaypay is rather inflexible, poorly documented and a pain to setup when you have hundreds of products with varying prices.

So my question is, do you know of any other european payment providers that take sms and call payments?

As a response to Roberts answer/question

Hi Robert, I must say that the Zaypay solution is the best and only I've seen thus far regarding phoned payments. However, since its now 2 months ago I finished the implementation of our custom Zaypay UI I can't remember much of the the details of the problems we were having. I'll try to give a brief of them anyways the best I can.

First of all I would like to see a redirection type scenario for payalogues. From what I remember you guys are using the JS framework "Prototype" which doesn't play nice with jQuery which we are using so we weren't able to use the popup-type scenario supported by payalogues.

Furthermore when implementing our custom interface I remember a lot of missing translations, like words that were codes instead of a word or a phrase. This meant we ended up writing/translating all the messages we needed ourselves.

Also, another point of annoyance was the setup of prices and items. I wish we could just send in the order items/prices as a part of the interface like you can in Google Checkout or PayPal (not that they're flawless either), instead of having to define ALL the items you will ever sell through your admin interface beforehand. As far as I can remember it is virtually impossible to use Zaypay for a multi-item order in its current form.

Finally there are, as far as I can tell, some security issues that you have to think about when you implement a custom solution... especially a ajax driven one. As I said in my original post you do mention this in the documentation but I believe the documentation wasn't that comprehensive regarding security issues. Again I wish I could give more details but the code & client is long since gone, so I can't look up the comments I wrote. Sorry!

Oh yeah, the general API documentation weren't exactly comprehensive and 100% correct either.

Again, I don't want to advice people against using Zaypay, if you don't use a conflicting JS framework the payalogues seem very easy to implement. I just want to advice that people who consider Zaypay should try it out first on a realistic prototype and think about their implementation before releasing to production if they imeplement custom interface (which I can't recommend).

Maybe it's just me who misunderstood a lot of things but I generally had a difficult time using your framework and I was left with a feeling that the API was very new and not thought through from the beginning.

A: 

Why not write your own using a combination of an SMS gateway provider that translates an incoming message to use PayPal or Google Checkout. That way you could build your own API to suit your needs.

If it is good enough you might even be able to sell it as a service.

Khalid Abuhakmeh
Thanks, but I guess my deadline within 2 days is out of the question then. ;)
JohannesH
Oh sorry Johannes, that sucks. Well I guess this is still an option if your business realizes there are no other alternatives.
Khalid Abuhakmeh
Hehe, yeah... I doubt they'll ever realize anything. Oh well, better have a talk with the stakeholders tomorrow. :)
JohannesH
A: 

After doing a lot of searching on the web I'vedecided to go with Zaypay anyways. Writing your own provider seems like an overly expensive solution to this problem.

What you can do instead is to use the limited Zaypay API instead to make your own UI, but be careful not to introduce any security issues if you do so. I've identified at least 2 ways you can get into trouble if you aren't careful. Zaypay does tell you to be careful if you're implementing your own API... I'm just stressing the point. Basicly you should make sure that your application is tamper-proof. For example, a user should not be able to change the price id, price key etc.

JohannesH
A: 

Hi Johannes,

I read your post, I'm a bit surprised, being difficult to integrate is not something we hear often. But i'd like to hear your comments. Maybe you can let them know by email (sales (@) zaypay(.)com.

Regards, Robert

Robert
Added the comments to my question...
JohannesH