[ic] Recuring billing?

[Kevin Walsh]

> 
> Could someone give me a high level description (and suggested readings,
> hopefuly) about how recurring billing works?  I've seen the 'recurring'
> keyword referenced in load-cart and save-cart, but I don't think this is
> what I'm looking for.
> 
> We have a monthly subscription fee for accesing our site, and want that
> monthly fee processed (and billed) automagically.
> 
> We don't want the user to have to "check out" a cart for this charge, simply
> have that amount billed every month.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> I suspect this will involve kicking something with cron, but I'm not sure
> what I'd kick.
> 
Interchange won't do that for you; That's something you will have to
implement yourself.

Perhaps you could write a script to scan your transactions, orderline
or some other table(s) looking for items that are supposed to be billed
each month and process them accordingly.  Such a script could be run
from cron, as you suggested.

If you implement such a system then you'll need to consider a few
points:

  1. How will the user cancel their subscription?
  2. If the recurring charge is to be taken from a credit card then
     how will the script have secure access to this payment information?
  3. How will you record the transaction each month?

etc. etc.

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