CCBILL - Question with seemless integration (mainstream)
 

Considering using ccbill as a processor for an upcoming project. However in my world we don't allow for sending people to a third party site for processing. To the end user it has to be a seamless experience where they stay on our website.

The integration needed would be that we host both the payment processing and affiliate registration forms on our website. When a user completes those forms we POST that information to an API, and wait for the callback / response.

There would be two systems in place:

1) The customer form: A user wants to purchase the product. We host the form on our website, it contains all the necessary fields for ccbill's form, the user completes the form and submits it. We pull out the fields required for our CRM system (username, email, and password) and send the rest (the billing information) as a POST to ccbill. If we get back a good response from ccbill stating the payment went through, we would create an account for the user in our CRM using the three fields we captured from the form (username, email, password). Obviously, we would not be storing any sensitive information such as CC info, we would simply be hosting the forms on our system to forward that information onto the processor (over secured sockets layer).

2) The affiliate registration form: A user joins the site and wants to market the product to take a cut of sales they referred. Again, we host the form with all the necessary fields - when the user submits we send that as a POST to ccbill and wait for the response. That response would need to send back some information about their affiliate ID so we can append that information to the user object in our CRM (As we would be creating our own custom PURL system).

I did the livechat with someone at ccbill this morning, and according to that person it is not possible to self-host join forms and POST credit card information to ccbill. Which if true, would negate them as a possibility for this project.

My questions are: Is what this ccbill rep explained to me true? Are there any other options out there for a processor that has automated affiliate payouts - that let us self-host forms and POST that information to their system?

The key to our requirements are seamless signup on our end (easy enough with most processors and we do it all the time in eCommerce systems). The wrench in this one is automated affiliate payouts, which I've never actually done before outside of adult.

Why would you want to use a specialist, porn, high risk IPSP for a mainstream project?

You'll get MUCH MUCH better rates going to a mainstream IPSP.

We're already on a mainstream payment processor. We're currently using Stripe.

Stripe = 2.9% + 30¢
ccbill = 3.9% + $0.55

Not sure how it wasn't clear in the OP, but we're looking into options for automated affiliate payments.

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.

My thoughts exactly.

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.

Have you checked http://www.authorize.net/

Maybe they can do what you are looking for? I'm not sure about the affiliates though...

Good luck with your search.

ccbill's mainstream version http://www.ecsuite.com/
also http://www.2checkout.com/
http://www.ccnow.com/
http://authorize.net/

We use mycommerce.com (pricing starts from 2.9% + $1/?1). It's possible to modify template for order form so that users have the impression that they do not leave the original page. You can also install your own SSL certificate for the order page afaik.

Also, I don't believe that any popular payment processor would let you process CC information.

I'm not really talking about processing the credit card data. That is all still done by the processor/merchant.

Take urbanoutfitters.com for example - you purchase something on their site. You're not being taken away to another site during the check out process, their payment form isn't an iframe or disguised element that exists on another site. It's entirely standard practice for any real eCommerce system - the purchase process is done onsite, and CC info is sent as secured POST data to the processor.

That's not the difficult part, that's easy (and something that is possible with any real processor). The difficult part from what I'm finding is finding one that has an affiliate system. One that allows transactions to be referenced to a person, and then that person is paid automatically per the affiliate payment settings. Or, I shouldn't say that is difficult - it's finding one that does it all as an integrated/seamless service which is rare as I've found so far.

I dunno, GFY wasn't the place to come for such a question anyway. I was just having my coffee one morning and thought "Hey, the affiliate thing is a key component in adult I'll go start a thread on GFY!".

What you are trying to accomplish is exactly what NETbilling specializes in. Let us know if we may be of assistance. You'll find our system to be the most flexible the industry today.

We also have a 24/7 call center in house I can handle all of your phone orders, charge inquiries, disputes upsell's cross cells, promotions, etc.

Please post questions here or contact our sales department for further information and to get set up.

Thank you, Mitch Farber