online payment from clients

[discomobiledj]

Can anyone recommend a decent online payment system, not Paypal, that doesn't charge a bomb?

[TonyB]

NoChex - http://www.nochex.com

Google Checkout - http://checkout.google.co.uk

[Tom]

i dont want to hijack this thread and i dont want to seem dumb but how does this work with bookings ect???

[Vectis]

i dont want to hijack this thread and i dont want to seem dumb but how does this work with bookings ect???

Customer pays their deposit, or balance, online rather than sending you a cheque or paying cash.

I used to offer Paypal or Google Checkout but hardly anyone used Google so I've reverted to just paypal. Will review again in say 6 months to see if google is picking up market share. Main difference (apart from cheaper fees with google) is customers need a google sign-in whereas with paypal they don't - they can just whip out a credit card and cough up.

Some people moan about the fees charged but they're similar to having a PDQ machine notwithstanding the setup charges and anyway, they're tax deductible as expenses.

Here's an example page from my website for a specific booking to show how I work it. When I send out the booking forms I walk the customer through the payment options. If they send a cheque for the deposit, a quick database update and the webpage is updated.

Example (http://www.vectisvibe.com/pages/PVV-2165.htm)

[Tom]

i see what you mean. just want to say that looks really professional and i want a bit of it. :lol:. What account (paypal) did you use to set this up. Might do it now so its another way for people to pay me.

[Vectis]

I just updated my regular PayPal account to a Business account (free) and used their 'button generator' tool (under Merchant Tools) to spit out the HTML code required, then pasted it into my own page.

Actually mine's a bit more involved than that, as the payment pages are all produced dynamically by a piece of code I wrote that interrogates my bookings database, but for small-scale use you could use any old HTML editor to build your own pages. Once you have the template, it's easy!

[Marc J]

Looks good Martin, well implemented - BUT (and this is a big but) simply changing the number on the end of the URL lets anyone see other bookings / fees etc.

OK, so know personal data is there and no info about the event(s), but it still lets a client see what they are paying compared to others. I know this is all transparent anyway because your prices are published, and your quote generator is available....but there still something about the way you've done this which makes me think it shouldn't be like that....

I imagine you give clients their own links....people being only human I'd say some would play around with the URL just out of interest....and seeing someone else's event (even without details) just makes it all seem "insecure".

Just my opinion :)

[Vectis]

Looks good Martin, well implemented - BUT (and this is a big but) simply changing the number on the end of the URL lets anyone see other bookings / fees etc.

OK, so know personal data is there and no info about the event(s), but it still lets a client see what they are paying compared to others. I know this is all transparent anyway because your prices are published, and your quote generator is available....but there still something about the way you've done this which makes me think it shouldn't be like that....

I imagine you give clients their own links....people being only human I'd say some would play around with the URL just out of interest....and seeing someone else's event (even without details) just makes it all seem "insecure".

Just my opinion :)


Opinion noted (and respected as always).

I did think this through, hence the lack of identifiable data other than a booking reference and a date. (Actually it's my intention to remove the date because if you then go digging round the 'requests' area you can glean a bit more info...ie customer's name).

My bookings get a sequential number, and can therefore be up to a couple of years apart, and I don't hide the fact that I offer different services right across the scale from £80 to £500+ with many options and all my customers are aware of this because my booking forms introduce all the options and additional costs to them as well as ask them to specifically reject those which are not required. I did this because of a criticism from a customer last summer which suggested I didn't do a good enough job of advertising the available options. Anyway I digress...

In the initial contact with the customer I ask if they would like to pay online, and only those who say yes gets a page on the site, so at the moment the majority (maybe 75%) don't.

If things change (business levels, more customers wanting online payment) then I'll probably change tack and go with a proper secure payments system but for now this'll do and it's only had good comments from customers so far. The worst that can happen is someone pays the wrong bill and that's easily sorted at my end :)


Edit: Dates removed. Been meaning to do this for a while :)