[ic] Status of Paypal Intergration

[Dan Browning]

At 10:30 PM 4/30/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Beating on a dead horse... (about Paypal.com integration).
>
>I'm finally ready to start implementing!   Thank you Dan Browning for 
>pointing out that you can't install to two servers simultaneously.  At 
>least this is part of what I derived from our conversation and you were a 
>life saver.  Without this tip, I could have been pulling my hair out for 
>ANOTHER two months...  Please correct me if I'm wrong but I found 
>bin/makecat to work MUCH better when you're not trying to force the 
>catalog to install to a separate secure server.
>
>Anyhow, now that I'm starting setup, I discover that there are six payment 
>options standard in the system.  Unfortunately, my favorite option, 
>PAYPAL.COM is not one of those.  Exercising due diligence, I have searched 
>the archives for approximately one hour but have not come across a 
>solution.  Found a lot of folks asking the question in the fall of 2001, 
>and a couple of promises, but did not find a message that implied a 
>solution has been found.
>
>So... what is the status on the Paypal Intergration?   I have 
>traditionally accepted lots of credit card payment types, as long as they 
>come through paypal.com.   Perhaps I should be looking at other options 
>that don't require membership or is a Paypal.com option available and I 
>just haven't seen it.
>
>TIA,
>
>
>Andrew Lietzow

As you can tell from the archives, this has been asked a lot.  I've taken 
Jason Kohles viewpoint on the matter...

This post by Curt Hauge <chc@mninter.net> includes directions for a simple 
(but not pretty, and not seamless) Paypal solution:

http://interchange.redhat.com/pipermail/interchange-users/2002-April/020041.html

This post by Jason Kohles <jkohles@redhat.com> explains why a really good 
paypal solution is hard (but could be done for a paying client), and why 
the simple paypal solutions either:

  * aren't integrated/seamless, or
  * require the paypal username/password (a big no-no)

http://interchange.redhat.com/pipermail/interchange-users/2002-February/018090.html
<quote>
The main problem is that you have to leave
Interchange in order to complete the payment, which means Interchange
has to enter your order in the order database, and then send you off to
paypal, which leaves it up to the merchant to check paypal and determine
if you actually paid after you left the site before shipping your order.
The easiest idea I had to integrate this was to have Interchange enter
the order with a flag in the order table indicating that the order had
not been finalized yet, and then to toggle the flag once paypal posted
the payment information back to you and Interchange verified that the
payment was authentic.  This is the structure I have worked on
implementing, but as I mentioned, the real answer to 'whhhhyyyy won't
you make a PayPal mod' is 'if you want it free, you get it whenever it
happens to be done, if you want it now, you should hire someone to build
it for you'
</quote>

I hope that helps,


+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Dan Browning, Kavod Technologies <db@kavod.com>
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The optimum committee has no members.
                 -- Norman Augustine