Overview: PayPal Website Payments Pro
Following up on my last post in eCommerce, here’s my report on PayPal’s Website Payments Pro.
FEES
Discount rate: 2.9% + $0.30 USD
Monthly fee: $20.00 USD
Custom integration: Depending on your needs, average integration costs will run anywhere from $650 - $1600.
REQUIREMENTS
* PayPal requires that you offer Express Checkout as an option on your shopping cart’s checkout page.
* You must submit an application and be approved before you can use Website Payments Pro.
NOTES
It took me a few days to get into PayPal’s Developer Central to set up a test account. Apparently they’re having some issues with the confirmation emails not being sent out to users registering for the first time. I signed up a couple of years ago, so when I finally remembered my old password I was able to log in.
Once I had access to the “Sandbox” (the developer’s testing area), I created a new business account and signed up for Website Payments Pro. The application process is somewhat long, but typical of what I would expect when applying for a merchant account. The usual business PayPal account setup requirements apply, which include entering basic information about your business, verifying your email address, and adding and verifying a bank account. When signing up for Website Payments Pro, a few extra steps are required:
- Submit your application
Enter your social security number or EIN along with some basic business information. In the “Sandbox” (the developer’s testing area), my application was automatically approved. - Accept the billing agreement
It basically just says you will be billed $20.00/month for the service. - API Set-up
Select an API implementation method. Options are “Grant API Permission” or “Request API Credentials”. Since I’m building my own shopping cart using WebAssist’s eCart extension for Dreamweaver, I chose “Request API Credentials”. (The other option is for third party shopping carts, whereby you grant them permission to make transactions on your behalf.) On the following screen I was prompted to choose between an “API Signature” or “API SSL client-side certificate”. I chose the Signature method. - Integrate!
PayPal estimates integration will take 2-5 days. That seems fairly accurate. The WebAssist eCart extension made this step really easy. I had a working shopping cart and was making transactions in less than a day. There’s still a lot of work to do, but the basic functions are there.
If you’re coding your shopping cart by hand, PayPal offers plenty of example scripts to get you started. A word of warning: integrating the API is not for the faint of heart. If your coding skills are a bit rusty, you may find the task a bit daunting.
CONCLUSION
All in all, PayPal Website Payments Pro is a good solution for your eCommerce needs. If you don’t have the technical skills to do it yourself, or the funds to hire a developer, there are plenty of third-party shopping carts available.
While you’re deciding on the best way to add Payments Pro to your website, you can use the Virtual Terminal to process orders over the phone, by mail or through fax. To use Virtual Terminal, you simply enter the customer’s credit card and payment information through the Virtual Terminal page in your PayPal account.
With all the resources available for developers, it doesn’t get much easier than this to add real-time payment processing to your website.