- API For Selling Membership

Ecommerce Solution - API for selling Membership Services - US based merchants ONLY.

Payment Online's Application Programming Interface (API) for selling Membership Services is one of the most affordable, flexible, and feature-rich ecommerce solutions available to organizations that already have a back-end database and Internet Servers for hosting.

This affordable top-quality ecommerce solution is designed to offer tremendous flexibility and programming features for almost any technical implementation you can imagine.

Unique in its programming flexibility, you can review a few of the implementations that some our clients have adopted. This solution is designed for both marketeers and programmers. See Description below for details.

Ecommerce Solution - API for selling membership service

The API solution described below is ideal for individuals, businesses or corporations that wish to sell membership services with recurring billing (daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.), to online shoppers (members).

Payment Online's API - (Membership) ecommerce solution is a completely integrated and easy-to-deploy membership ecommerce solution - that is, the secure credit card processing servers, Internet merchant account, payment gateway to banking network connections, and easy-to-use online management tools are ready-integrated for you. Hence integration with your back-end database and Internet servers hosting your site is much, much easier.

If you have an existing back-end database software/server for your order processing or customer management, and you already have a secure SSL Internet server (or hosting), then may be what you need is to directly connect to the Payment Online membership-sales processing servers through the Payment Online API direct connect using the https POST method (or server-script method).

1. Description - API (Membership) ecommerce solution.

2. Sample Sites - API (Membership) ecommerce solution.

3. Features List - API (Membership) ecommerce solution.

4. PRICING - API (Membership) ecommerce solution.

Your do not need to download and install any software on your PC and you do not need to go to multiple companies for different components of your ecommerce membership recurring software.

Other eCommerce Solutions:

If you do not have your own back-end database and do not have Internet Servers with SSL (or hosting), then you may use the eCom Business Pack (Membership) to easily build a "buy button" for your membership service through our easy-to-use online management tools. Once the buy button has been built, then you simply copy and paste the buy button html code (or hyperlink) into your Web site next to the Membership service description. CLICK HERE for more information.

For clients that require custom programming and development, we offer some of the most experiences teams of ecommerce platform developers that have years of experience developing custom ecommerce solutions and custom programming for the membership software industry. CLICK HERE for more information on how you can speak with a technical manager to discuss your requirements and analyze the technical issues on developing a custom Membership-Service ecommerce solution.

1. Description - API (Membership) ecommerce solution.

This API ecommerce solution is designed for companies that want to charge their online members a recurring service fee (daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc.).

If you have an existing back-end database for your order processing and customer management, and you already have a secure Internet server (or hosting), then all you need is to directly connect to the Payment Online membership-service processing servers through direct connect https POST method (or server-script).

You directly connect through your own order pages or scripts. The API offers direct connection methods that can be used for connecting via simple html order pages, or for integrating into software or more complicated back end systems.

The process is straightforward. On your Internet servers (where your web site and order page is hosted), orders are placed by your customers. The customer order information is stored by your back-end database solutions that you have implemented. The transaction information (credit card type, name, number, date of expiry, total amount, etc.) is POSTed (or server-script submitted) securely to Payment Online membership-software processing servers. Our servers will then process the transaction through the banking networks and proceeds from sales are deposited to your business bank account within a couple of days.

At the most basic level, API is used by constructing an HTML form, which does a POST to https://secure.paymentonline.com/cgi-bin/security-audit/transaction.cgi (Please only use the secure URL provided for to you at the time of setup of your account - and not the one shown above). In the HTML form, there will be a number of fields that give the Transaction Server the information needed to process the transaction through the banking networks. Some fields are required, and some will be optional depending on what options you wish to implement.

Depending on what result is expected from the transaction, the payment gateway will send back a response, which indicates whether the transaction was approved or declined. The API ecommerce solution provides a number of options for formatting the response, depending on what your exact needs are.

In contrast to most other transaction servers and payment gateways, the Payment Online system tracks the individual items in the order. When you look up a transaction in the Online Order Management tool that you receive with your service, you will see all the items that were ordered and the cost for each item.

There are many reason why a company that already has the back-end servers and the technical staffing would use Payment Online Membership Recurring transaction processing servers. Firstly, there is no need for you to store and retain credit card numbers of your customers and add fiduciary responsibility to your operation. There is also the fact that developing a membership software platform is no easy task and requires experience and know-how. Even with experience and knowledgeable technical staff, it takes years to develop a comprehensive, reliable, secure, fully functional feature-set, tested, and proven membership-software platform with integrated payment gateway and protocol exchange servers.

Of course, the main reason for using Payment Online API connection to the Payment Online Membership-Recurring processing servers is the unmatched functionality and feature-set for a platform of its type. Which receives constant addition of features and functionality to remain years ahead of competition.

Below we have provided for you some of the flexible implementations that our customers have adopted to cater for their business model or marketing strategy.

For any recurring transaction, there are always 3 fields that are required. They are recur_billing, bill_cycle, and num_cycles. These are the minimum needed to process a recurring transaction. There are many other optional fields, the use of which depends on what type of recurring billing implementation you desire.

Implementation 1 - API ecommerce solution

Suppose that you want to charge a customer $30.00 per month on the 1st of every month for 12 months. You also, want to pro-rate their initial billing to the first billing date (1st day of the coming month). Here's sample variable settings.

Implementation 2 - API ecommerce solution

Suppose that you want to charge a customer $10.00 for the first month, and $30.00 per month thereafter for 11 months, you would set the following values:

Implementation 3 - API ecommerce solution

Suppose that you give your customers a free 15 day trial, authorize the card for one dollar to make sure it is valid but don't 'capture' the fund. You also want to automatically bill them thereafter at $29.95 per month until they cancel.

Implementation 4- API ecommerce solution

You may want to give your customers a free trial through the end of the current month (no authorization), and bill them $14.95 monthly on the 1st of the month every month thereafter until they cancel.

These are only some of the few implementations that are most popular. There are many other implementations of recurring models possible with this very flexible Payment Online API (Membership) ecommerce solution.

The Payment Online Transaction Servers and the Payment Gateway automatically populate the username and password fields that are sent in the POST Back. The username is the email address of the customer, and the password is a random generated code. This is done for every order even if it is not used, so it is always available via the Post Back. Either one or both of these fields can be overridden if they are sent along with the transaction. If you place a value in the username or password field and submit it with the transaction, the Recurring Management Server will use the values you send instead of the default ones generated internally.

To add the username and password to your authentication database, the POST Back feature can be used which performs an http POST to a cgi script on your Web site with the username and password, along with other information. In order to make sure that not just anyone can POST a new user to your database, there are mechanisms in place that sends notification when this occurs.

How you handle authentication of users is entirely up to you and the decision on how http authentication should be implemented is up to you and your Webmasters or programmers. We do provide cgi scripts for various systems that can be used to accept the POST back and add the username and password to your database, but configuring your system and installing the script is undertaken by your staff.

2. Sample Sites - API (Membership) ecommerce solution.

Here you can see some client sites that give you a flavor of how the API ecommerce solution can be used to develop your ecommerce site. Your Payment Online Account Manager can help you to process a test transaction - see contact information below.

One of the most powerful features of the API ecommerce solution is the seamless ability to integrate your web site with Payment Online Transaction, Recurring, and Payment Gateway Servers. This allows you to keep the look and feel of your site - without leaving your site to go to a software module hosted elsewhere.

Payment Online technical developers have been building ecommerce solutions since 1996 and our company was one of the very first software houses that built systems devoted to the membership software industry. Payment Online's Membership Servers are modular based and have already integrated with a variety of payment gateways, multiple-protocol-exchanges, transaction servers, database servers, and member management tools.

3. Features-List - API (Membership) ecommerce solution.

The following is a list of the features attributed to this ecommerce solution:

Automated recurring billing system (weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc.).
One of the most flexible e-commerce solutions available.
Seamlessly works with your existing Web site design.
Comprehensive transaction processing with almost unlimited scalability.
A completely integrated solution on powerful back-end application servers.
Real-time online credit card processing.
Integrated Internet merchant Account (2.15% Visa/MC rate in most cases).
Integrated Payment Gateway connection to the credit card banking network.
Integrated SSL secure connection to Transaction Servers.
Up to 100 Mbps bandwidth with one hop to the Internet Backbone.
Carrier-class Data Center for Transaction/Recurring/Internet/Database Servers.
Secure Online Management Tools for transaction/membership management.
Security AVS (Address Verification System) Settings availability.
Security CVV2 (key code at the back of credit cards) availability.
Easy to use CRM (Customer Relations Management) functionality.
10 different ways to produce quick sales/marketing reports.
Search customer database for Member name, address, orders, e-mail, etc.
Download customer database in text format and import to MS Excel.
One-click transaction history report of a Member/Member.
Quickly De-activate unpaid accounts.
Re-activate paid accounts.
One-click Virtual Terminal for manual sales processing.
One-click Virtual Terminal for issuing credits.
Technical Support and Customer Care Services.

CLICK HERE for PRICING

4. PRICING - API (Membership) ecommerce solution.

The standard pricing for the API (Membership) ecommerce solution is described below. Please note that in order to accept credit cards on the Internet, a merchant needs an Internet Merchant Account, as well as a web site and an ecommerce solution that is applicable to their business model - in this case, Membership recurring model.

If you already have an Internet Merchant Account, contact Payment Online and speak to a sales professional and explain that you already have an Internet Merchant Account - and only require the API ecommerce solution.

Please note that we have described the pricing as thoroughly as possible to avoid any misunderstandings. The repetition below is intended to avoid hidden costs that some ecommerce providers in the industry are known for. We like to treat others the way we want to be treated ourselves: full disclosure and honesty.

API (Membership) ecommerce solution - One time setup fee: $495

Other Service fees:

If you have any questions, you can contact our sales teams (9am-5pm PST) on (206) 382-1515, and ask to speak to a sales professional.

For your convenience, you can also contact us by e-mail. Simply CLICK HERE and you can send us your questions. We also welcome your comments and appreciate the time you take to let us know how we can serve you better.

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