views:

133

answers:

1

I would like to create a subscription based website with users getting charged every month. I know I have to create an account with paypal or authorize.net. Do these payment providers automatically bill the user every month? How would I take care of offering the service free for 30 days and start billing after that?

Also, I've heard of middle men services like spreedly, chargify. Where do they fit into the equation? Can someone help me wrap my head around these concepts?

Considering, I am based in the U.S but would like to have the payment provider accept any kind of currency. Which payment provider do you suggest?

+1  A: 

Actually, you need to establish a merchant account and a payment gateway account. The merchant account is with the bank who facilitates your transactions to the card issuing banks for approval. The payment gateway acts like a credit card terminal as it connects your website to your merchant account provider.

To automatically bill your customers every month you can either build your own subscription service (bad idea as you will have to store credit card information which opens a big can of worms, namely PCI compliance issues) or use pre-existing services like Authorize.Net's Automated Recurring Billing service which handles the subscriptions for you. Options like trial periods are usually built into services like that.

If you're going to accept a variety of currencies then your options take a huge plunge. Most US processors and payment gateways only accept payments in US Dollars. International transactions also make your account high risk which will greatly reduce the number of providers who will accept you and offer you competitive rates.

Alternative solutions would be to use Paypal or any other third party payment provider. You lose some of the flexibility and control that you would have with a true merchant account with a payment gateway but accepting payments in different currencies and international orders become less problematic.

John Conde