Online Payment options

Question

Hi everyone,

I am writing an online music store (wow!). I have written a shopping cart that caters for user to buy either an individual track or an collection of tracks (album or user-created playlist) and it works like a charm.

I have also created a checkout button which redirects to a secure (https) page containing credit card form where users can buy online with their credit card.

This is now my issue:

1) Which Service provider should I go for that provides credit card facility? Bear in mind that in South Africa (my client base) doesn't have PayPal facility.

2) Is my way of doing this whole online purchasing the ideal way? If not, what is wrong with it or what should I do better it?

3) It has to be java compliant since I'm developing it in Java.

Thanks a ton!

Answer 1

For credit card you can't go wrong with FastSpring (but I don't think this is really a SO question):

http://www.fastspring.com/

Their Java API is very good and they're themselves a full Java shop.

Btw using FastSpring you'll find that you don't need to process yourself the credit card: this is fully taken care of by FastSpring.

Answer 2

Credit card acceptance sucks if you are not in US/UK. Also you might check how many people actually use credit cards in South Africa. In many countries SMS is a far more common payment method.

A quick google turned up PayGate which is targeted at the South African market. I expect them to have some SOAP API. There are some API docs on their site with code samples (including one for Java).

Answer 3

Lucky You, there is a Wired article on this topic today!

Answer 4

As a company that serves the SA market (as well as internationally), we deal with PayPal, WorldPay and EFT. Dealing with payments in SA is a royal pain. Most SA customers deal in EFT, CC payments online, even though we handle them, are decidedly not the preferred option locally.

Mobile payments are not likely to be helpful here, since the network operator will take a huge cut out of the end user costs. That said, all 3 operators have event billing interfaces, expect to see less than 50% of the end user costs in your hands after the operator et al take their slice.

Speak to your bank, see what merchant solutions they offer or interface with. I know we have accounts with 3 major banks to speed up EFT payment recognition. For those outside SA you have no idea what it takes dealing with a local bank.