Quote:
Originally Posted by JasonCollins
Due to PCI compliancy you will most likely need your own merchant account instead of a processor. Maybe there are some out there, but we would not do that either. We get audited quite regularly and we need to be secure about the transactions, card info, etc.
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Because the site is an eCommerce platform that doesn't actually store the sensitive information, we're exempt from almost all PCI compliance regulations. While the payment form is hosted from our site, the sensitive customer information is sent and stored at the processor - we only retain things like order id, email, password, etc. It's a standard eCommerce system.
We do have an affiliate system that is entirely custom and written from the ground up. Only certain types of users are affiliates, those affiliates get a PURL, and all sales statistics are kept and tracked so affiliates do have a portal to view how many sales they have referred and the money they have earned.
Our issue as it stands right now is that affiliate payments are handled internally by the store owner. So it's up to them to cut checks each month to affiliates. Which, isn't a bad system at all and it works perfectly right now. The caveat is they now want those affiliate payments to be automated by the payment processor. Which throws a wrench into the system. As it stands right now I'm not aware of any merchant/processor that does affiliate payments - which also has seamless integration with an eCommerce platform. Now, we could easily do the eCommerce integration ourselves to make it seamless to the end user - however that would require a merchant or processor that has a good API.