Semi-OT: Payment Integration

[John Esak]

Good God, it has been almost 9 years now, but WAY back then, I obtained
(purchased) RawQuery from you for the very purpose of submitting my requests
to authorize.net. I remember a long night of banging around with my code,
your program, and authorize.net's test mode to get the procedure together,
but it has been worth it. Almost a decade of completely trouble-free
operation. I've sold many products through the valar website and each one
worked through the initial setup I laid out. Still working tonight, should
anyone wish to go buy something. :-)  Actually, only have the Survivor
Series CD's and a completely unsupported full filePro Accounting System
still up there for sale, but every couple months or three... I get a bell
ringing in my living room, and the printer prints out a label which has my
address/logo and the To: address neatly printerd out... With the "thing"
which was bought in teeny tiny print along the bottom.  So, I can actually
pack the thing up and mail it out without ever seeing or touching a
computer.  All the regular receipts and verifying email gets sent around,
the money goes in the bank... And Bob's your uncle.  This is all thanks to
having filePro on the BSD server I lease from Verio. Too cool. All of it
would have been impossible were it not for the teeny little thing that
RawQuery could easily do, that I could not. Viz the encrypted submission
to/from authorize.net itself. I haven't looked on your site, but I'm sure
you must still sell that utility, right?

John


> -----Original Message-----
> From: filepro-list-bounces+john=valar.com at lists.celestial.com 
> [mailto:filepro-list-bounces+john=valar.com at lists.celestial.co
> m] On Behalf Of Fairlight
> Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 3:11 AM
> To: filePro Mailing List
> Subject: Semi-OT: Payment Integration
> 
> Well, I've just completed my first Authorize.net integration 
> with a filePro
> web-based solution.  I have to say, I'm pleased with Authorize.net.
> 
> I've used PayPal for years.  PayPal is...well...people knock 
> the living
> hell out of them for many reasons, many of them invalid.  The 
> ones that
> I -do- consider valid are horrible documentation, missing or 
> often-moved
> documentation, a product-line they can't seem to leave alone 
> for more than
> six months at a time, and an increasing case of greed in 
> terms of fees for
> services.  PayPal also has horrendous customer service and no realtime
> developer support.
> 
> By contrast, Authorize.net had well-established, clean, SHORT docs.
> Everything I needed was -thoroughly- (yet briefly) covered, and I only
> found one real glaring contradiction that was easily remedied once I
> looked up the error number I was getting.  The docs have been 
> in the same
> place for ages (I've just never actually -done- the 
> integration to them
> before--I've researched it plenty).  The integration methods 
> seem to be
> pretty stable.  They had decent customer service, as well, 
> and I didn't
> even need the developer support because the docs were quite 
> sufficient.
> The test site they have is a JOY to work with, compared to PayPal's
> Sandbox.
> 
> I did only the SIM method, not AIM.  I could do both, I'm more than
> confident.  The preference these days, however, especially among fP
> houses, but also in general, is -against- collecting card information
> in-house.  The PCI compliance nightmares and expense are 
> something that
> most places that have even been doing online payments for 
> years are trying
> to get -away- from, not move towards.  In that vein, the 
> simpler, hosted
> integration methods like SIM are really the way to go to keep 
> overhead down
> and give a shot in the arm to simplicity.
> 
> I looked at...I think it was SkipJack.  The docs were over 
> 460 pages...it
> was absurd.  A sift through them showed them to be overly 
> complex for most
> uses.
> 
> I've actually worked with YourPay.  Their stock perl code is 
> -crap-, and
> relies on curl, which can't even do the amount of fault 
> detection that you
> really need.  They bounce/fail transactions without any 
> reason, and their
> architecture doesn't lend itself to much better than the 
> lousy sample code
> they provide.  Can't speak for the other languages you can 
> use, but if they
> put 200% of the love and care into other languages as they 
> did perl, they
> probably -still- majorly suck.
> 
> So far, I really like Authorize.net.  I'd actually go with 
> them myself and
> toss PayPal, if my bank had a bloody clue what they were 
> doing.  They have
> their own online platform, and they only seem to be able to 
> use that--and
> only one person across every branch in the city seems to know 
> a thing about
> it, no less.  So I just do PayPal and ACH-withdraw my funds 
> as required.
> But for a direct feed into a merchant account...I'd definitely say
> Authorize.net is the better way to go.  The monthly fees are about the
> same, but the setup fees are a lot less than with PayPal as well.
> 
> Anyway...in case anyone's looking at needing to do 
> integration work in the
> near future, that's my $0.02 worth on several gateways.
> 
> mark->
> -- 
> Audio panton, cogito singularis.
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