I have a requirement to be able to accept different forms of payment within the same order - ie not just the usual credit card or paypal for the whole thing, but perhaps paypal for one item, cheque for another. I know this sounds quite crazy, but there is a good business reason for the requirement so I can't just push back.
The best way I can think of implementing it at the moment is to have kind of a hub page, where you can "launch off" into multiple flows for each of the payments by opening new windows. I can't figure out a way of doing this in a linear flow as for example you can't guarantee that a user will come back from paypal, so you'd then lose the user completely.
Is there a neater way of doing this that anyone can think of, or can anyone point me to an example of a site that does somethign similar for inspiration?
Even when opening several windows at once, there is no guarantee that the user will complete all payment methods. So you are most probably going to lose a few users or payments. Be sure to send automated e-mail follow-ups for missing payments to minimize this problem. The e-mails could contain links to your payment providers for easy accesss to their outstanding payment operations.
This is a difficult problem, but how many payment processors do you have to go offsite for? Should only be paypal.
In any case, I'd give the user all their payment options on one page, and let them fill in the amount for each processor or payment type. Then the next page would list those they chose, the amount for each, and a link to "Complete this payment".
The link would open in a new window.
You'll have to have a good back end and javascript, as well as user warnings so that the payment page gets updated as each payment is processed. Consider using popup dialogs to show that a payment has completed, or that the order has sat idle for more than 10-30 minutes without complete payment.
Also, consider sending emails and letting the user complete the payments through links in the emails. Send a new email each time a payment is completed, and a final email if all payments are complete and the order is moving forward.
Send an email one hour, and one day later for uncompleted orders with remaining payments required, that also give them the option of choosing different payment options for the remainder.
Email isn't best (lose more orders that way due to changing minds) but it's good for the type of transactions you're thinking about.
Personally, I'd do it like this:
Let the user fill their basket in the ususal way
Allow them to add payment types and amounts to a list (2nd basket almost)
When the payments balance against the basket, start processing the payments
For external sites, try a frame which has a progress indicator at the top.
In an ideal world it wouldn't be linear. But a lot of users might lose a spawned window, or get confused by the parallelism.
Better to stick to established IxD principals and rely on good feedback instead. Give the user control from the outset and keep it transparent.
Lastly, start the payment process with the most immediate (e.g. paypal) to reduce users giving up. (COD should come last!)
Hope this helps,
Tom
If possible, just separate your order into separate smaller orders based off of the payment selections of the user.
And don't do it linearly. If anything you could open up each payment processor in a separate window so that you maintain presence.
I would take an approach where the whole order is broken down into sub-orders for each of the necessary payment methods. You can load the PayPal portion, the check portion, etc. and process them separately. It's important for the user to know how much is being charged to each of their payment methods, so it makes sense in this case to present the whole order as broken down by payment method (versus displaying as a unified order).
Implementation would be easiest if it's always a certain subset of items that is forced to any payment method. If this differs by user, or if it's when the order reaches a certain amount, the situation could become much more complicated. Can you be more specific about your approach?
Processing Multiple Order Payments
Give the user the option to make a payment for a pending order using any of your payment types.
Let the user specify an (Amount <= [Order Total] - [Payments Received]), if that is part of your requirement.
If the order is still pending after you process the payment (see how below), take them back to step 1 to rinse and repeat.
How to store and process each payment made:
Use a Payments table to store all order payments, the PaymentMethod used and its Amount with its CurrencyCode.
When a payment is received for an order, store the payment and sum all received amounts converted into your base currency as [Payments Received].
If [Payments Received] >= [Order Total], mark the order as Paid. Or, if dealing with double-converted foreign exchange rates, check if it is correct to within a small-enough margin, eg 0.5%.
Optionally, convert any overpayment into prepaid credit for the client.
Related
I am learning to develop microservices using DDD, CQRS, and ES. It is HTTP RESTful service. The microservices is about online shop. There are several domains like products, orders, suppliers, customers, and so on. The domains built in separate services. How to do the validation if the command payload relates to other domains?
For example, here is the addOrderItemCommand payload in the order service (command-side).
{
"customerId": "CUST111",
"productId": "SKU222",
"orderId":"SO333"
}
How to validate the command above? How to know that the customer is really exists in database (query-side customer service) and still active? How to know that the product is exists in database and the status of the product is published? How to know whether the customer eligible to get the promo price from the related product?
Is it ok to call API directly (like point-to-point / ajax / request promise) to validate this payload in order command-side service? But I think, the performance will get worse if the API called directly just for validation. Because, we have developed an event processor outside the command-service that listen from the event and apply the event to the materalized view.
Thank you.
As there are more than one bounded contexts that need to be queried for the validation to pass you need to consider eventual consistency. That being said, there is always a chance that the process as a whole can be in an invalid state for a "small" amount of time. For example, the user could be deactivated after the command is accepted and before the order is shipped. An online shop is a complex system and exceptions could appear in any of its subsystems. However, being implemented as an event-driven system helps; every time the ordering process enters an invalid state you can take compensatory actions/commands. For example, if the user is deactivated in the meantime you can cancel all its standing orders, release the reserved products, announce the potential customers that have those products in the wishlist that they are not available and so on.
There are many kinds of validation in DDD but I follow the general rule that the validation should be done as early as possible but without compromising data consistency. So, in order to be early you could query the readmodel to reject the commands that couldn't possible be valid and in order for the system to be consistent you need to make another check just before the order is shipped.
Now let's talk about your specific questions:
How to know that the customer is really exists in database (query-side customer service) and still active?
You can query the readmodel to verify that the user exists and it is still active. You should do this as a command that comes from an invalid user is a strong indication of some kind of attack and you don't want those kind of commands passing through your system. However, even if a command passes this check, it does not necessarily mean that the order will be shipped as other exceptions could be raised in between.
How to know that the product is exists in database and the status of the product is published?
Again, you can query the readmodel in order to notify the user that the product is not available at the moment. Or, depending on your business, you could allow the command to pass if you know that those products will be available in less than 24 hours based on some previous statistics (for example you know that TV sets arrive daily in your stock). Or you could let the customer choose whether it waits or not. In this case, if the products are not in stock at the final phase of the ordering (the shipping) you notify the customer that the products are not in stock anymore.
How to know whether the customer eligible to get the promo price from the related product?
You will probably have to query another bounded context like Promotions BC to check this. This depends on how promotions are validated/used.
Is it ok to call API directly (like point-to-point / ajax / request promise) to validate this payload in order command-side service? But I think, the performance will get worse if the API called directly just for validation.
This depends on how resilient you want your system to be and how fast you want to reject invalid commands.
Synchronous call are simpler to implement but they lead to a less resilient system (you should be aware of cascade failures and use technics like circuit breaker to stop them).
Asynchronous (i.e. using events) calls are harder to implement but make you system more resilient. In order to have async calls, the ordering system can subscribe to other systems for events and maintain a private state that can be queried for validation purposes as the commands arrive. In this way, the ordering system continues to work even of the link to inventory or customer management systems are down.
In any case, it really depends on your business and none of us can tell you exaclty what to do.
As always everything depends on the specifics of the domain but as a general principle cross domain validation should be done via the read model.
In this case, I would maintain a read model within each microservice for use in validation. Of course, that brings with it the question of eventual consistency.
How you handle that should come from your understanding of the domain. Factors such as the length of the eventual consistency compared to the frequency of updates should be considered. The cost of getting it wrong for the business compared to the cost of development to minimise the problem. In many cases, just recording the fact there has been a problem is more than adequate for the business.
I have a blog post dedicated to validation which you can find here: How To Validate Commands in a CQRS Application
I want to integrate recurring payment using Payeezy in codeigniter. I have implement the single time payment using curl and now i want to recurring payment with acknowledgement to update my DB.
I created a WordPress plugin for Payeezy that also handles recurring. You should be able to use the underlying PHP code for CodeIgniter.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-payeezy-pay/
I can explain the process that will get you the least PCI compliance issues, and that's the token-based API.
1. Generate Token in Payment Form
So basically you'll use the Javascript API to generate your authorize token. An authorize token doesn't charge the card. It's for validating the card and returning a token for better PCI compliance. This API source code and explanation is here:
https://github.com/payeezy/payeezy_js
2. Post Form To Your Server for the Curl Call to FirstData
Then, once you have this token, you post it back to your controller file with a standard form post, but remove the name attribute on your credit card number and credit card CVC fields so that these do not post to your server. Note that you'll need to store this data (but not card number and CVC) because on refunds (and subscription cancellations) you'll need to reply back with the last purchase token, cardholder name, card type, card expiration date, amount spent, and currency code. You may wonder why FirstData/PayEezy is asking you to store cardholder name, card type, and card expiration date. Well, there's a perfectly good explanation for that. Your call center may need that detail for troubleshooting an issue over the phone with a customer. Also, you need that for refunds. And, most importantly, if you're doing a recurring subscription payment, your code needs to look at the expiration date ahead of time before charging because the API call will fail if the card is past expiration. Last, because you're not storing the credit card number and credit card validation (CVC) code, you're going to be in stronger PCI compliance.
From there, since you are already familiar with the Curl process for a single-purchase, it's just a minor single field change (transaction_type becomes 'recurring') in the Curl to do the recurring. For anyone not familiar with the Curl process, it's explained here:
https://developer.payeezy.com/payeezy-api/apis/post/transactions-4
Also, for those unfamiliar people, you'll need to read up on how FirstData/PayEezy wants you to send in the Curl request with a special header that includes Content-Type: application/json, apikey, token, Authorization, nonce, and timestamp. You can see more detail about that here:
https://github.com/payeezy/payeezy_direct_API/blob/master/payeezy_php/example/src/Payeezy.php
(What I did to make that code simpler was intercept the Curl calls from that script into a log file so that I could make it much more straightforward in a single function instead of breaking it up into all these little functions. That made it far easier to understand what was going on.)
3. Switching Curl Call for Recurring Payments
So, as you discovered in your Curl call, you saw how to do a one-time purchase by setting the transaction_type to 'purchase'. For doing recurring, you set transaction_type to 'recurring'. You have to do that from the start. So, if I'm selling something for $29.99 monthly, the very first month charge needs to still be set to type 'recurring', as would any subsequent month.
4. Your Responsibilities for Recurring Payments
Now, this is where everyone gets hung up because it's poorly documented unless you check the PayEezy Developer Support Forum. For subscriptions, PayEezy doesn't have a system for setting payment plans with varying durations, nor setting up automatic (set-it-and-forget-it) subscriptions for you. (I think I read that they have something experimental on Apple Pay, but nothing else yet.) So, to achieve this, you have 2 choices:
Use Chargify.com. Unfortunately, though, this increases CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) of your product or service. You'll have to factor that in if you want to use that. This basically is a SaaS service that you send the transaction to and they handle the automatic subscription plan for you against FirstData/PayEezy.
Roll your own cron job solution. To do this, you basically take the Curl code for a single transaction, and change the transaction type from 'purchase' to 'recurring'. (Do that from the start -- don't start with 'purchase' on a recurring charge.) From there, it's up to you with your own cron job to check for product or service expiration terms, and then send the API call back off to FirstData/PayEezy for charging that card again with the 'recurring' transaction_type.
On either of those options, the customer never gets asked to enter in credit card data past the first time unless their card expires or unless you have some problem billing that card (like insufficient funds).
Of course, doing your own cron job route for the recurring payment has implications you'll need to prepare for:
Add some failsafe code so that you prevent the possibility of duplicate transactions, such as a database field.
Add some failsafe code such that if you have cancelled a subscription, you won't charge them again.
Add some failsafe code such that if they cancel their subscription, yet purchase it again as a subscription at a later time, that you do charge them again and don't block it from your other failsafe code.
Add some sort of grace period on your product or service such that even if you "say" that the term expired, you have like a 2 day grace period so that your API has a chance to do a renewal.
It's probably a good idea to email the customer before their renewal period so that they can make certain they have money in their account and have a way to cancel that charge (like call your office or call center, or have a link to click where you provide a way to cancel).
If their card has expired before the renewal, and you detect that in the warning email that comes before renewal, then you'll want to let them know this.
If their card has been declined for any reason at the point of renewal, then you'll want to let them know this and give them a link to go through the cart again to buy it again, or some other way to save that transaction in your code.
How To Do Subscription Cancellations / Stop Recurring Payments
To stop a recurring payment, you treat it just like a refund on a single purchase, but use the transaction ID of the last purchase. This is documented with this Curl example here:
https://developer.payeezy.com/payeezy-api/apis/post/transactions/%7Bid%7D-0
Look under "Refund" and choose Token.
I am working on a package to process incoming payments from external entities and match them against existing "bills".
Each payment has a reference to to bill_id, so matching is easy. Bills are then flagged as paid.
Problems is payment may bounce and the contra-payment will be received in the same or, more likely, in a subsequent file. Logic is that a contra-payment must be reversing an already paid bill, while a regular payment must be for a "non paid" bill. How would you implement and enforce such a validation in SSIS, considering that the contra-payment might be in the same file as the payment it is reversing or in a successive file. How would you structure your data-flow?
Also critical is the need to report on bounced payments, to assess a kind of "default rate".
I'd like to hear the opinion of the experts.
Many thanks
I can see that the capture has been processed successfully:
But then on the "transactions" screen, "Is Closed" column is saying "no" next to capture. I think I just don't understand the role of this column. Can someone help explain it to me?
A little background on the credit card payment transaction process flow helps make sense of this. These are the basic flow actions of the transaction lifecycle:
Authorization
Capture
Settlement
These flow actions are broken down into more specific operations that can be called against the payment gateway. Here are some basic ones that are relevant:
Authorize (AUTH_ONLY):
Run the card for a given amount and obtain a unique authorization code. The amount will be put on hold and you are guaranteed these funds as long as you use the authorization code in a Capture transaction within 30 days. (How long before an authorization code expires varies by company. Check with your payment gateway)
Customers don't see the authorization as a charge on their statement, but they will see their available funds decrease by the amount you ran the authorization for.
If you don't use the authorization code in a follow-up Capture transaction, the authorization is "dropped", funds returned to the customer's balance and you can no longer use it.
Capture (PRIOR_AUTH_CAPTURE):
Use a previously obtained authorization code to complete the transaction.
The amount captured can be lower than the originally obtained authorization amount (this is useful in cases like our example where you don't know the total order amount ahead of time).
Source: http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/conversion-traffic-to-cash/t-processing-payments-authorize-vs-capture-vs-settle-2030.html
Settlement: This is the process merchants must complete ... to be paid for their transactions.
The product or service must be delivered or performed before settlement can take place. In the case of mail order/telephone order, this specifically means the goods must be shipped before the settlement process is performed.
Source: http://www.shift4.com/insight/glossary/
In Magento, the is_closed flag signifies that a transaction is settled and no other operations may be performed against it. The reason a transaction would be left open until settlement is so that you can do partial shipments of goods (multiple captures), as well as void or refund the transaction.
To use Magento’s Mage_Authorizenet_Model_Directpost as an example, the capture() operation leaves the current transaction open, while void() and _refund() operations close it.
I am trying to make a functionnality so that a customer will be able to split his order into 2, in case some articles are temporarily unavailable and if they wish that we send them part of their order first. So the idea is to create 2 new orders and cancelling the old one.
Do you have any idee about how to do this programmatically please ?
What you're describing doesn't sound necessary... You're talking about sending part of the order first... Notice in the Magento Admin once an order is place you can create an invoice, take note that you do not have to invoice everything at one time, the same is true when you create a shipment. You'll need to make sure you're merchant / payment gateway supports multiple partial captures against a single authorization.
However, if you really want to split the orders in two, it is a rather complicated process. We've done it, and its very tricky... you need to modify the opcheckout.js file, you'll need to modify the template since you will have to create seperate shipping methods for each order. You'll need to modify the OnePage controller & Model files very significantly. There are tricky areas in terms of re-executing the totals and making sure data on the order and subsequent quote and address models is precisely what is required by Magento. Maintaining the other checkout functionality requires diligence, such as saving the customer's address when checking out. If you're really going down the path of coding something that splits an order into two orders during the checkout process, feel free to send me a message and we can talk more in-depth and I'll send you some code.