I have a question related to an application I am currently developing.
I don't know if should use in app purchases or not.
The idea is that currently you can transfer money from a user to another just like Revolut does. For this you pay let's say $1 per transfer.
Beside this, the application makes queries every 6 months to get some info from a financial institution and each query is paid by me as the API is payment per request.
Now, if I want to have some plans in the application like free and premium and for premium let's say you can do free transfers between users (just like Revolut) and have a monthly query to the financial institution, do I need to use Apple's IAP and pay a 30% tax for each subscription or can I use a 3rd party payment gateway?
I really couldn't find any response on this on the guidelines and I am trying to figure out how Revolut for example can use their payment method in order to purchase plans ?!
Thanks!
For this you need to add apple's IAP only. You can just use payment gateways for taking direct payments from the client. For adding subscriptions you need to use IAP only.
I'm working on a Marketplace project and I am looking for a simple payment solution that would facilitate transactions made between Buyers and Sellers globally. There will have to be an Escrow system and the payments would go through only after the job has been marked complete.
I have done some research and I am aware of a few solutions available but there are some problems with these. BalancedPayements look really good but they are US only. Stripe Connect is also an option but they do not have an Escrow system.
The basic steps needed are:
Buyers use their credit cards to put the funds in escrow.
Sellers start providing their service. Once the job is done and
approved by the buyer, the funds are released to the seller (after
taking a cut for the marketplace itself)
For the level of flexibility I need, this is how I am planning to execute:
Have some kind of a virtual currency (Let's call it "coins") in place.
The Buyer pays the platform to buy the coins. example - $100 for 100
coins. Stripe can be used for this payment acceptance. Now, Since the coins are in our system and our control, we solve the escrow problem and ensure that the buyer has sufficient funds to fund a job.
And once the job is completed, the coins get transferred to the seller's
account. The seller can now checkout their coins. For this, we can use PayPal.
Does this Coin system seem like a good idea? Is there something that can be done better?
My app needs the ability to pay different merchants, so essentially I'm acting as a middle man. A user would fill up their cart from one merchant and then I'd present them the whole paypal interface and then that particular merchant would get paid. So first question: is that possible? Or is it only possible for MY account to get paid? If I had 10 merchants, I'd like to directly send them the payment amount (and have them pay the transaction fees).
The other question is discounts. Say a merchant creates a discount of some kind, is it possible with the mobile SDKs to apply these discounts?
My app is for iOS at first but will be quickly followed by an Android and then a web version of it. I don't really care which SDK I use so long as it can meet all my feature needs.
If none of this is possible with any of the SDKs, are there any out there that might accomplish what I need? Thanks.
It sounds like you're describing chained payments. You can utilize chained payments by integrating with classic MPL. The new Mobile SDKs will support these kinds of payments in the future, so keep on the look out!
I am building a webapp which requires users to regularly top up their account. To allow for this I am exploring the google wallet inapp payments api and have got this working fine. However, I would like users to be given the option to auto-top up when their account balance becomes low. I have looked at the subscription documentation but cannot see whether this is possible or not - it seems you can only have a subscription which draws money at regular intervals.
Is there a way to have a user pre-authorise this kind of transaction, and if so could you please point me to any documentation that would allow for this?
I don't believe so. The subscription feature is probably your best bet and should (unless I'm missing something) get you to the "same place".
A "pre-authorization" somewhat says, you'll come back at some later time to charge (aka "capture") the pre-auth. There is no API command that does that (capture/charge) in Wallet for Digital Goods. The process is immediate...
There (is) used to be one in the Google Checkout API where you are given 7 calendar days to charge a pre-auth. However, this product will be retired in November.
We are prepping for the release of a large web application that has been in development for the past year. We are about to start the process of integrating ActiveMerchant to handle recurring subscription fees for the service.
I am looking for any advice regarding best practices considering our requirements (listed below) and any additional heads-up for common pitfalls or specific issues I should be giving special consideration. The payment gateway we will be using is PaymentExpress as it's one of the few supported gateways that has recurring billing and doesn't have any special conditions for companies operating outside of the USA. The business behind this application is based out of the UK.
Users of the application create an account with a sub-domain where they can access and customise the application and their data. Below are some of the requirements/features that might have an effect on how billing works:
All users get a 30 day trial
There are different plans, including a free one
Higher priced plans have larger limits on the amount of data (e.g. users, projects, etc) they can have in their account
Billing period will be monthly, beginning after trial
There will be discounts/coupon codes to get a percentage off the normal price for a year on plans, etc.
Plan pricing will change as features are added
Specific hurdles I can foresee will be things including the following:
How to handle downgrading when they violate the plan limits for lower level plans.
Behaviour when credit cards expire or payments don't go through (a read-only mode enforced, perhaps)
When plan pricing changes, we want to honour previous prices for existing users for a time period (such as 6 months), then start charging higher rates. If the plan price decreases, it will take effect immediately.
Other advice that would be helpful would be anything regarding flow of the application. How should billing forms be presented to the user? When should credit card information be required? How should invoices be sent, stored, and accessible?
I should disclose that we plan to base a lot of the code base off SaaSy. SaaSy is designed to be used as a separate Rails app that handles all the signup and account management side of things. However, this doesn't work for us since we never planned for this from the beginning and it would be a tedious process to adapt our application to work like that. Consequently, we'll be pulling code and ideas from SaaSy and merging them into our app, a considerably less tedious task.
One thing I wanted to add: keep in mind you don't need to use the recurring billing feature that is built into the gateway. In general these systems are legacy and very difficult to deal with, we get spoiled in the rails world.
You get a lot more flexibility just using them for one purpose (to bill a credit card, and perhaps also store credit cards for PCI compliance). Then roll your own recurring billing in your rails app with a cron job, a date field for when they are paid through, and amount each person is paying (in case they used a coupon) etc.
One small example: sometimes people will cancel a monthly subscription in the middle of the month. They want to make sure they don't forget to cancel before the next payment. Most gateway recurring billing that I've seen will instantly terminate the account (or send you a message indicating this). In reality, the user has paid through the end of the month and should be given 2 more weeks of access. You can do this if you have rolled your own recurring billing in rails, but not if you are using the gateway recurring billing. Just a small example.
RailsKits has a Software as a Service kit that should do what you need. It has built-in support for free trials, upgrading, downgrading, plan limits, etc., and it supports PaymentExpress (and some others).
I've researched it a bit for a project I'm doing, but I haven't purchased it yet so I can't vouch for it. However, I have seen a few blog posts praising this kit.
While the RailsKit is relatively inexpensive when compared what it would cost you to implement all of its features yourself, there are a couple open source versions out there that aim to accomplish the same thing. The one I remember off the top of my head is called Freemium.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that Ryan Bates said in his most recent Railscast that his next episode or two will deal with recurring billing, so keep an eye out for that. He usually does one episode per week, and the five he's done since December 22 all cover handling payments of different types.
Peepcode has a PDF for sale(70 pages) that details various aspects of payment processing and industry practices for this. It may be worth checking out:
http://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf
I'm also in the middle of setting up a subscription based website and these are our current requirements. They may help you regarding best practice:
Users will be able to choose one of
the subscription plans.
Users will be required to enter their
credit card details to sign up to
their chosen plan.
All major credit and debit cards must
be accepted including Maestro and
American Express.
Each plan will have a 30-day free
trial so users' credit cards should
only be charged after the 30-day
period expires. However, the validity
of credits cards should be checked at
the time of sign up.
Users will be emailed a few days
before their credit card is charged
to notify them that they will be
charged soon unless they cancel their
account. If they cancel their account
within their 30 day free trial, their
credit card should not be charged.
After any free trial period, users
will be charged in advance for their
use of the system - ie they will
pre-pay.
Users will be charged automatically
every month for their chosen plan.
Each month, users will be sent an
email a few days in advance to notify
them that they will be charged. Once
payment has been made, users will be
emailed an invoice showing that their
payment has been received.
Users will be able to upgrade or
downgrade their accounts at any time.
When users upgrade/downgrade, their
next subscription charge will be at
the new rate. Users will only be able
to downgrade their accounts to a plan
that can handle their data. For
example, if they currently have 10
active projects they can't downgrade
to the Basic plan because the Basic
plan only allows 5 projects. They
will have to delete or archive 5
projects before you they can
downgrade to Basic.
Users will be able to log in to their
account and change or update their
credit card details.
Users will be able to cancel their
account at any time. There will be no
further subscription charges after a
user has canceled their account.
However, users will not be refunded
for part of the month they have
already paid for.
All parts of the payment system must
be 100% PCI DSS compliant; including
any 3rd party systems.
The payment system must support
automated notification and retry of
failed subscription renewals.
The payment system must support
discount vouchers with expiry dates.
Credit card details must not be
processed by or stored on our servers
they should always be processed/stored by our 3rd party
payment processing partner. We do not
want responsibility for securing
these details and complying with
legal rules and regulations.
Users will be able to log into their
accounts and see a full billing
history including dates and amounts
paid. We will also need to be
able to log in to a system to see
customer payment plans and payment
history. This will be essential for
customer service.
We've also been looking at http://chargify.com/ which looks like it could save a lot of coding time.