Feedback: Ditching PayPal

[Will Bradley]

Hey all! I tried my best to lighten our bookkeeping workload by hooking our member database into PayPal, but it turns out that PayPal really sucks. I've found an alternative but want your input (especially input from people who give HeatSync money.)

----- BEGIN BACKSTORY -----

Basically, the way we're "supposed" to get info about our current subscribers is by manually logging into the website and checking each transaction by hand. It seems that when you use PayPal's easy orange button to start a subscription, you've used a "product" that has absolutely no API (automatic backend) access whatsoever.

So in order to do nice things, we'd have to have everybody login to PayPal, cancel their subscriptions, and sign up again using a new PayPal form that I'd create.

----- END BACKSTORY -----

So assuming that we're not just going to keep paging manually through PayPal every month, and 70+ people are going to have to redo their membership payments either way, I figured maybe we should use something that doesn't suck as hard as PayPal. People have been telling me that Stripe is the new hotness, so I've set up a demo site. The questions I'm asking are:

1) Will you hate me if we move away from PayPal to a "type your credit card into this form"-type payment system? (You'd login with your email address at members.heatsynclabs.org to sign up / change / cancel payments.)

2) Do you feel safe entering their info into Stripe? (barebones demo at http://hslbilling.herokuapp.com/customers , click "sign up" -- afterwards you can what my app sees, which is basically just a customer ID, no credit card number.) The main reason I ask you to try this is because Stripe uses a new "pop-in" credit card form that isn't what you might be used to with e-commerce. I would secure our members' site with SSL just for extra protection. Doing it this new Stripe way lets us handle credit cards easily, and without having to make our webserver PCI compliant (which is a massive pain in the butt.)

Thank you for your input! I hope we can move forward and automate this so that we can start getting automatically, instantly updated on membership payment info instead of waiting 1-2 months for me or Chad to do it by hand.

Alternatives include Dwolla, Amazon Payments, and Google Checkout, however I feel like they might jerk us around in various ways similar to PayPal. If people don't like Stripe, however, and prefer to manage payments via a 3rd party like these guys, I can try it.

[machinist]

bitcoin, FTW. 

[Corey Renner]

" PayPal really sucks"

I don't know if I said it here or on another forum, but my thought was this:

"If the Nazis created an online payment system, it would still be slightly less evil than PayPal."

I welcome the replacement.

cheers,

c

[Ryan Mcdermott]

I'll pay you however you want me to.

I am confused about paypal hate, though.  I use paypal a *lot*, (I use it for everything I buy online, if I can), and have never had a problem with it.

Is it just the fees or something?

-Ryan

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HeatSync Labs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to heatsynclabs...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[JR]

So we have a choice between:

Re-entering our data onto PayPal,
or:
Re-entering our data onto something else, that hopefully sucks less

In other words, the comparison isn't really between what we have now- it's between the 2 future alternatives.

PayPal sucks.  My auto-pay is currently broken (thanks to them, and without reason or good way to fix), so I'll need to sign up again anyway.  If the alternative sucks less, go for it.

My one concern (since I think you'll have security covered) is how it will show up on my billing.  I want to make sure it's easily identifiable as a HSL- and preferably a way to separate classes, dues, and donations.

Ryan: As someone who once had PayPal lock his account  and then demand absurd paperwork (like an electric bill and other stuff they had no need for) instead of just saying "you never verified your  microtransactions... do that and we'll unlock it".  PAYPAL SUCKS.  They think they're a monopoly and act like it. 

You'd think something like fixing the auto-pay (without completely resubscribing) would be trivial.  Think again.

[Corey Renner]

Well, Google is your friend if you want to find out all the various ways that you can be screwed by Paypal.  In my case, I bought something online and paid with PayPal because I had a big balance.  The vendor sent me a broken item (manufactured wrong, not damaged in shipping) wouldn't give a refund.  Called Paypal (an effort in itself), found out that they only force refunds if an item is not shipped, doesn't matter if it's broken or the wrong item, as long as there is proof of some kind of delivery, they won't help you.

Me: So let me get this straight, if I advertise that I'm selling diamonds and I accept payment and ship coal instead, but I have a delivery confirmation, that's ok with Paypal?

Paypal: Yes.

I'd be less offended if they didn't advertise as "The safest way to pay on the internet" since a credit card is FAR safer.  Millions more examples of PayPal evilness online, but that's my personal "screwed by Paypal" experience.

cheers,

c

[Will Bradley]

PayPal works the majority of the time, and everybody seems to have it. But when it fails you, it fails HARD. Here's the answer I found at Hour 8 of implementing PayPal's API for us: https://www.x.com/developers/paypal/forums/nvp/subscription-profiles-not-supported (English: people who use the yellow Pay with PayPal buttons are second class citizens.)

I'd like people to check out http://hslbilling.herokuapp.com/customers however. Do you think Stripe's credit card form is acceptable?

[JR]

From the input side- I think it looks fine, or it will once the other options are added.

From a back end side, is this supposed to be a transaction log that will then be parsed further?  If so, it might be enough.
If not, I think it's a start.
For a membership list standpoint?
When does the membership expire?  If someone makes 2 monthly payments in a single day,  does it handle that?

If someone uses this for a donation or a class, is that sorted into the proper bucket?

[Nate Plamondon]

Looks like it will do the trick.
One concern is that it's not clear whether this will be a recurring payment or I'll have to come back and do it again next month. "Pay $50" seems to imply that it's a one-time payment.

--
Nate Plamondon

[Jacob Rosenthal]

If we do it lets be decisive about it, pick something we wont have to change again for another 3-5 years at least, and lets get it right the first time.

The beauty of recurring payments is people are too lazy to cancel them. That lazyness will be outweighed quickly when we start sending annoying emails for a month straight telling them they need to go here, click this, cancel this, resign up here. We will probably at least 5% of our recurring payments during this swap.

But better now than a year from now when we want to move and we can't take that hit.

[Jacob Rosenthal]

probably ^lose

[Mark Kirschenbaum]

Although the lack of an API really sucks I'm afraid what is going to happen when you have people re-create an account. I can see HSL almost like a gym membership. Dormant members would hate to cancel it, but if the gym makes it easy, you might as well. I bet you may see a loss of 35% membership if you proceed with this cancellation. (Number is out of my butt, but you all see what I'm getting at)

Can you just download a CSV file each month from paypal and have it suck the data from there? Does it need to be an automated API?

-Trunk

[Will Bradley]

Good points, all. Yes this form would initiate a recurring $50 charge per month, which currently isn't clear. I think I can fix that.

All the data associated with payments would be very accessible; by using the customer ID you see on the main page, everything from transaction history and last 4 of the cc#, to next payment date and balance are available.

I'm not sure if it's possible to make two payments in one day; if you used this form to do so, you'd be signing up for two memberships.

Class fees and donations would be a separate form and thus a separate bucket. The reporting capability is very good.

Good news about losing ~5% of our payers: that's only 2.6 people. There are about 52 active PayPal subscriptions at the moment (not including people who do a manual PayPal payment, etc). I'm not sure what to do about oddballs, but in any case it's the volume of payers that makes this a pain; if we get almost everyone to switch it should still be fine.

[Jacob Rosenthal]

35% would be 17.5

A good test would be to have everyone here and in the lab fill out a poll or something and see what your reach is. 

[Will Bradley]

Mark: I share your concern, I'm brainstorming ways to encourage switching without encouraging cancellation.

There are CSV downloads but they'd be a kludge and it still requires Chad and usually myself to sit down and enter the data into our systems. I figure if we can automate the "who is a member / how many members do we have" data, then our treasurers can maybe ignore those bits and focus on the raw money of it. (QuickBooks API also seems to be a pain in the butt; we'll see.)

Basically, CSV could turn a 2 hour job into a 30 minute job, but the hard part about HeatSync is usually getting people (including myself) to show up in the first place.

[JR]

A couple other edge condition thoughts:

Does it handle a declined charge gracefully?  Or will the declined entry look like a successful one?  What if they then turn around and use a different card that gets approved?

Hopefully clarifying that this is for recurring payments will take care of most of the issue, but can a test be inserted to see if someone's already at the given membership level and thus avoid the double billing?

How does someone change membership levels?  If I want to move from $25->50, I'd hope the system would end the old payment and then add the new one.  Likewise if I move from $50->25.

If we stay with PayPal, could multiple addresses be used to do some bucketing and then parse a CSV further? (not sure if PayPal supports multiple addresses to a single account, or if it would break it out in the CSV differently)

[Mark Kirschenbaum]

Maybe you are right and this is a non-issue. 

My initial thought is to get an exact idea what technology you want to switch to and the cost difference (if any). Then along jacob's idea, is just email all the autopayment members your decision and see if anyone has an issue with it and if they are ok with it (response required style of email). Those that do not respond are possible "dropees".

Reconciling paypal is a pain in the butt but same with all non-structured data sources. I'm willing to give a hand with this stuff if you send me a drop of the paypal csv or iif download and let me know what your roadblocks are. Trust me I've gone through this pain before with my business. Biggest thing is spending some time eac week on it. Monthly/ quarterly reconciliations will make you pull out your hair. 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "HeatSync Labs" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/heatsynclabs/134_KA5xEpg/unsubscribe?hl=en.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to heatsynclabs...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

--
Mark 'Trunk' Kirschenbaum

602.770.0480 (email preferred)

website: gethypoxic.com  

Like Us on Facebook

 

[Will Bradley]

> Does it handle a declined charge gracefully?  Or will the declined entry look like a successful one?  What if they then turn around and use a different card that gets approved?

I'll have to check but the status info is pretty detailed. I'm sure at some point manual intervention may be required but I'll see what I might have to do to handle issues gracefully.

> Hopefully clarifying that this is for recurring payments will take care of most of the issue, but can a test be inserted to see if someone's already at the given membership level and thus avoid the double billing?

This should be handled by ensuring people don't sign up for multiple members.hsl accounts. One account, one billing profile (which you can modify as needed.)

> How does someone change membership levels?  If I want to move from $25->50, I'd hope the system would end the old payment and then add the new one.  Likewise if I move from $50->25.

In stripe, "customers" have a "plan" which you can switch as desired. I'm sure this is handled gracefully but I'll check. It's nice that I don't have to program this logic myself.

> If we stay with PayPal, could multiple addresses be used to do some bucketing and then parse a CSV further? (not sure if PayPal supports multiple addresses to a single account, or if it would break it out in the CSV differently)

This idea has been brought up; it's not the best option but it's a tool at our disposal. Problem with CSV is, it's just another manual process so it doesn't really solve many problems. It's better to just "know" member payment info and financial info instead of having to spend precious volunteer time doing data entry to figure it out.

[Jasper Nance]

I don't get why CSV is a manual operation. takes minutes to write a perl script or PHP parser to suck in and databse CSV information.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HeatSync Labs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to heatsynclabs...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

--
----------------------------------------------
Jasper Nance - KE7PHI
Creative and Scientific Imagery
http://www.nebarnix.com/

[Ryan Mcdermott]

(Sidenote: but you don't even need to write a parser for CSV on mysql:   mysql> load data local infile 'path/to/file.csv' into table potato fields terminated by "," lines terminated by "\n" (field1, field2, field3, field4, etc.)


Will, howabout a graceful transition?  Tell everybody to change to another provider, then tell them again, then tell them again...

Just never shut the paypal off.  If somebody has a $25/mo or $50/mo charge and the friction of setting up a new account would cause them to cancel, then just let their payment recur.

All the members, or anybody paying attention, will, hopefully, move to $provider2.  Anything that keeps coming to us via paypal can just get looked at as a donation.

[Erik Wilson]

I don't think we necessarily need to drop paypal, if I remember correctly they are the most used payment service of the few options we have. Their API isn't that great to use right now but it may improve at some point in the future where we may want to use it. I think we should default to Stripe and also offer as many payment options that we can implement, maybe just disable paypal for new memberships if it is that big of a deal. 

I agree with Nebarnix that it would be an easy Perl script to implement, maybe combined with a cron job would hopefully require almost zero people time. Have talked about that a little bit in the past but it would be a good idea to sit down and go over what we currently have to figure the best way to make that happen.

[Will Bradley]

Good insight. The good news is that Stripe is highly-structured data. You pop some lines of code into your website and suddenly the website (or database) automatically knows basically everything about your payments. Stripe even gives you code samples in different languages.

<rant>
I think logging into PayPal weekly is something that will not happen at HeatSync. Recently Chad and Marita have done enough work that we've lately been getting SEMI-MONTHLY REPORTS which is really exciting and I'm sincerely grateful for. I know businesses are run a certain way, but being an all-volunteer co-op is different; how much time could YOU honestly, regularly commit to doing that work for HSL? That answer is usually the same for us volunteers. We've all got busy lives, so we fit in volunteer time where we can. I'm actually amazed that HYH is such a resounding success; regular members sweep the floor and clean the bathroom every other week! Ask any other community organizer, this is amazing stuff and we have an amazing community.

The good news is that we've tried to structure HSL in such a way that it can live with and thrive under this type of volunteerism; but finances and computer systems don't really jive with a crowdsourced approach so I'm trying my best to automate those bits so as not to burn out the volunteers assigned those duties.
</rant>

[Will Bradley]

I agree that a slow "encouraged" transition is probably better for retention than a quick mandatory one. That's the kind of transition I was planning.

There is no automatic way of grabbing a CSV from PayPal that I know of; I could write scripts, but you'd still have to feed the data in by hand every month and there would be errors. It's feasible but with all the awesome stuff we're trying to do I don't feel like it's up to the task. PayPal also offers some kind of payment notification API but I'm not sure I want to spend a third night up til 4am just to see if it compares to Stripe...

I mostly want to make sure Stripe is an acceptable option for people. If it's not, I can keep banging my head against 90's technology ;)

[Chad Stearns]

Agreed While creating more options for payment has the advantage of increased convenient for the member, intentionally shutting down our primary source of revenue seems like a pretty bold move. The inconvenience for a donor to establish a new way of donating is nothing to ignore.

>I think logging into PayPal weekly is something that will not happen at HeatSync. 

I log into our paypal like, every other day. I can pull out a CSV pretty easily.

-ChadCS

[Erik Wilson]

Would this PHP script work to download the CSV?

http://board.phpbuilder.com/showthread.php?10327465-RESOLVED-PayPal-Curl-Script-to-Download-Transaction-History&p=10745547&viewfull=1#post10745547
 from

https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/About-Business/Automated-history-download-with-cart-details/td-p/633022

[Will Bradley]

> I log into our paypal like, every other day. I can pull out a CSV pretty easily.

Wat. It appears we need to chat before I continue further :P

The rest of this thread: any objections to Stripe itself, regardless of what we do with PayPal? The lack of an SSL icon in the address bar not freaking anyone out?

[Erik Wilson]

We should be using SSL with Stripe: https://stripe.com/help/ssl

[Will Bradley]

We will, I just find it interesting that they do the whole thing over Javascript (served over SSL but embedded into a potentially non-SSL page). So you'll see an SSL lock in the address bar, but it's not the same SSL protecting the credit card info. A bit tricky if you ask me.

Main reason I'm asking is because some hackers will be like NO WAY THE ONLY PERSON I TRUST WITH MY CC# IS PAYPAL. Of course, those people probably use cash instead...

--

[Steve]

Hi.  From what I've read so far, it seems the initial impetus for ditching PayPal stems from the desire to have tighter integration with billing information.

Have you looked into using IPN?  https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/classic/ipn/integration-guide/IPNIntro/

You can create a listener that eats and processes payment event data as it occurs.  Yes, you have to write code to handle that functionality, but perhaps that effort would be less than the effort required to switch everyone over to a new payment system.

Aside from that feature, I'm pretty sure there should be a better way to download transaction information automatically.  I'd be happy to look into this; however, it seems the decision to switch payment systems is a foregone conclusion and that people are generally upset not just with the lack of an easy txn download option, but with the PayPal experience as a whole.  Full disclosure:  I work for PayPal's Checkout software development group so I'm probably a little biased against switching to a competitor like Stripe.  Most of my knowledge is in the Ebay/Paypal inline checkout experience, but we do utilize the Express Checkout api extensively.  Please let me know if I can help!

-Steve

[Will Bradley]

Steve: good thing I didn't let my cursing out here on the group! IPN is one alternative I've considered, however I haven't tried it yet.

One reason IPN isn't appealing is because I have limited hours of volunteer dev time, and IPN seems to be notification-only, so for example when a member wants to up/downgrade their subscription, they would still have to login to paypal, (FIND and) cancel their recurring profile, and then login to our website to click the button on their member profile again -- an unintuitive workflow. More advanced integrations like querying subscriber status and accounting for fees charged also seem quite difficult. Finally, Stripe's API is just so damn easy to integrate it seems like more bang for my development buck. I find it unacceptable that PayPal doesn't seem to have full-fledged APIs or upgrade paths for their easy-to-use buttons and I just spent 8 hours chasing a white rabbit...

I just chatted with Chad and it seems like the best option is to move towards ADDING Stripe as an option and gently encouraging people to switch, and working from there.

If anyone likes PayPal/Dwolla/Stripe/etc or just wants to help, your help during Backend and Treasury Hacknights would really be appreciated.

[Will Bradley]

(Edit: if anyone likes PayPal/etc and wants to help implement other stuff like IPN/CSV/etc, it is a low priority for me, so your help is requested to make things like that happen... general programming help is also appreciated. Keep your ears out for hacknights!)

[Will Bradley]

<grumble> That PHP script doesn't appear to work (login failures, I tried hacking it to better emulate a PayPal login but it's still failing.)

Also, even if it did work, the CSV file download feature tends to tell me to come back in a few hours when it's ready to be downloaded. Seems like my options are IPN or bust. </grumble> 

[Mark Kirschenbaum]

Will, do you happen to have a reports tab on the HSL page?

Looks like this automatically posts a csv file. But I just enabled it so I will let you know. 

-Trunk

[Doug Shade]

My $0.02 worth...
As a PayPal "user"... I have no issues with it. It just works. AND... I am not aware of bad press regarding security, breakdowns, information leaks, fraud, etc... (I am aware of bad press that results from being too conservative in their policies that prevent: security, breakdowns, fraud, etc...)

For me... it ain't broken, so I personally am disinclined to fix it.

Cheers, Doug

[Ryan Rix]

--
Ryan Rix
http://rix.si

It is broken though, in a sense; its API is keeping the ops team and
treasurers from doing cool space-automation shit.

> Cheers, Doug

[Will Bradley]

>> from having to do data entry by hand :P

Mark, I don't see a tab like that, how do you get there, and does it work?

Doug: the main problem is that they're piling new technology on top of 90's-era technology, so they don't have one unified service. It's pretty easy for consumers, of course, otherwise they'd go out of business. But for payees it's an unwieldy dinosaur compared to their new (finally!) competitors.

[theksmith]

feedback from a "guest" here... i've been to HSL a few times and am considering applying to be a member. 

not having PayPal or at least Google Checkout would be an "buying obstacle". i routinely abandon shopping carts from sites that don't offer one of those 2 payment options in favor of other stores even if they cost more. as someone else mentioned, from the consumer side paypal "just works" and the mass public all have it.

[Chisholm Wildermuth]

I’d love it if PayPal were ditched and there was another automatic recurring payment option. 

[Frank Jensen]

I have been looking at Stripe and from a merchant perspective it is stupid simple to manage. The code to make a site that can be customer managed doesn't seem to hard if you know JS (I am JS r-tarded) I am playing around with making a site but I found I don't need it for my purposes since I would be handling all the CC info anyway.

[Chisholm Wildermuth]

I agree; I really want it to be recurring automatically. 

 

From: heatsy...@googlegroups.com [mailto:heatsy...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jacob Rosenthal
Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2013 11:53 AM
To: heatsy...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [HSL] Feedback: Ditching PayPal

 

probably ^lose

On Wednesday, May 1, 2013 11:51:55 AM UTC-7, Jacob Rosenthal wrote:

If we do it lets be decisive about it, pick something we wont have to change again for another 3-5 years at least, and lets get it right the first time.

 

The beauty of recurring payments is people are too lazy to cancel them. That lazyness will be outweighed quickly when we start sending annoying emails for a month straight telling them they need to go here, click this, cancel this, resign up here. We will probably at least 5% of our recurring payments during this swap.

 

But better now than a year from now when we want to move and we can't take that hit.

 

On Wednesday, May 1, 2013 11:41:03 AM UTC-7, Nate Plamondon wrote:

Looks like it will do the trick.
One concern is that it's not clear whether this will be a recurring payment or I'll have to come back and do it again next month. "Pay $50" seems to imply that it's a one-time payment.

--
Nate Plamondon

 

On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Will Bradley <bradle...@gmail.com> wrote:

PayPal works the majority of the time, and everybody seems to have it. But when it fails you, it fails HARD. Here's the answer I found at Hour 8 of implementing PayPal's API for us: https://www.x.com/developers/paypal/forums/nvp/subscription-profiles-not-supported (English: people who use the yellow Pay with PayPal buttons are second class citizens.)

I'd like people to check out http://hslbilling.herokuapp.com/customers however. Do you think Stripe's credit card form is acceptable?

On May 1, 2013 8:44 AM, "Ryan Mcdermott" <blh...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'll pay you however you want me to.

 

I am confused about paypal hate, though.  I use paypal a *lot*, (I use it for everything I buy online, if I can), and have never had a problem with it.

 

Is it just the fees or something?

 

-Ryan

 

On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 8:37 AM, Corey Renner <vand...@gmail.com> wrote:

" PayPal really sucks"

 

I don't know if I said it here or on another forum, but my thought was this:

"If the Nazis created an online payment system, it would still be slightly less evil than PayPal."

 

I welcome the replacement.

 

cheers,

c

 

On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 3:14 AM, Will Bradley <bradle...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey all! I tried my best to lighten our bookkeeping workload by hooking our member database into PayPal, but it turns out that PayPal really sucks. I've found an alternative but want your input (especially input from people who give HeatSync money.)

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HeatSync Labs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to heatsynclabs...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HeatSync Labs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to heatsynclabs...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HeatSync Labs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to heatsynclabs...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Will Bradley]

Thanks everyone for your feedback; I'm going to try PayPal's IPN as a stop-gap measure to get our recordkeeping going and then probably work on adding Stripe as an option/default.