nightkingdoms
Member
- Reaction score
- 11
- Location
- Arizona
I have gotten a lot of really good ideas and advice on how to better manage, promote and grow my business from these forums over the years. I've gotten awareness of a lot of tools I probably would never try or ever even know about which have helped me greatly since then. Because this forum and everyone on it are awesome!
I have shared or chimed-in on things that I personally use to further better my business and how it operates over that time. I will try or check out most things that I come across to see how they work and if they can help my business somehow all the time. Things like Square, WHMCS, PayPal, Twilio, Google Voice, down to tools like D7, LookInMyPC and more.
I've recently talked about Twilio for my toll-free number, forwarding and IVR system for my business that I checked out and started using. It was a low-cost method of completely controlling my incoming/outgoing calls and added a whole suite of possibilities like integrating telephony and SMS directly into my web site and business processes with simple programming. I know a lot of people on this forum aren't programmers, but it was something good I had to let everybody know about if they chose to check it out.
Well, I've got another one and it's called Stripe. Not too sure how in the world I originally found it now, though. But, everybody here pretty much has a web site and some have tried to integrate it for payments. Instead of opting to pay hundreds if not thousands just to be PCI compliant and able to take infrequent credit card payments online, most of us have opted to go the route of PayPal or Google Checkout. The problem with having those processors is that you lose the customer experience by sending them to a completely different site. You know (and your users know) that it's not like the big sites that take your credit card on their site and know that there must be a reason why you're using something "free."
The entire problem with taking credit card payments online is PCI compliance which has a whole host of rules and regulations regarding actually accepting the credit card data and if you can't comply, you don't do it under the threat of being sued. To get around the issue, you pass off the user to a 3rd party who takes care of all the PCI compliance and returns the user to you once it's done. Stripe takes the same idea and tweaks it a little... Instead of you receiving the raw card data -- which would enter your PCI compliance nightmare -- it's encrypted before it ever reaches your servers. You then take that encrypted information and submit it using another encryption key in the backend (programatically) to Stripe's servers and receive your response. All the while you should be on an SSL session to encrypt all of your data in transit as well.
This takes care of the PCI compliance where you never touch raw card data so you don't need to comply with all of those rules. Because you can send the data to Stripe in the background like you would with a processing company like Authorize.net, etc. you get to keep the user for the entire process. End result is you look like you're a big business and process the card right then and there on your site without having to pay all the money and headache for PCI compliance.
Better yet, I said it was like Square... 2.9% and $0.30 per transaction. No merchant account, no monthly fees, no setup fees, no minimums, no maximums, and deposits are made every 7 days to your bank account. All you need is to basically use some minor programming to get yourself on your way. It took me awhile to get used to the weird way (to me) that it handles errors, but altogether from starting to read their documentation, to testing/debugging and going live it was about 4 hours total.
This particular one is for collecting payments for remote support. I've touched on how I do it before on here once, I think. I use GoToAssist Expert. Normally you'd just direct them to fastsupport.com, have them enter their code and you're in. Well, I need them to agree to my terms and I want their payment info before I ever touch their computer. So I have a little process...
1. I enter their details for my record and it auto-sends them a link to connect for remote support.
2. They get a shortened link in their email or I can give them the short link over the phone and they get directed to my terms to agree to. After they agree, a copy of the version of terms they agreed to, their name, IP, date/time, etc. all gets saved into a database with the other info for later reference. Then they go to...
3. My payment page. This is where I added the Stripe solution. If the info they enter is correct, it will charge the card, send them to fastsupport.com and auto enter the info you'd normally have the client enter. Basically, they type in their card info and if it's correct, they click next and all-of-a-sudden I'm connected to their computer in less than a minute. If they get something wrong, it just give them an error and has them correct it.
So I now have a fully-integrated, seamless, real-time solution to accept live credit card payments online. I will definitely be trying to integrate this further into other areas. These guys have been around for a few years and have venture capital investments from some big VC firms as well as the founders of PayPal (ironically enough) so I don't see them leaving the scene any time soon. But, I found something that seems pretty good so I'm sharing! Oh! Almost forgot! Right now this is only available in the U.S. BUT, unlike all the other companies, half the people that work at this one are from other countries (including the founder) and are working big time to get it rolled out for other countries. They also want to know who's interested in it in their countries, so be sure to tell them.
I have shared or chimed-in on things that I personally use to further better my business and how it operates over that time. I will try or check out most things that I come across to see how they work and if they can help my business somehow all the time. Things like Square, WHMCS, PayPal, Twilio, Google Voice, down to tools like D7, LookInMyPC and more.
I've recently talked about Twilio for my toll-free number, forwarding and IVR system for my business that I checked out and started using. It was a low-cost method of completely controlling my incoming/outgoing calls and added a whole suite of possibilities like integrating telephony and SMS directly into my web site and business processes with simple programming. I know a lot of people on this forum aren't programmers, but it was something good I had to let everybody know about if they chose to check it out.
Well, I've got another one and it's called Stripe. Not too sure how in the world I originally found it now, though. But, everybody here pretty much has a web site and some have tried to integrate it for payments. Instead of opting to pay hundreds if not thousands just to be PCI compliant and able to take infrequent credit card payments online, most of us have opted to go the route of PayPal or Google Checkout. The problem with having those processors is that you lose the customer experience by sending them to a completely different site. You know (and your users know) that it's not like the big sites that take your credit card on their site and know that there must be a reason why you're using something "free."
The entire problem with taking credit card payments online is PCI compliance which has a whole host of rules and regulations regarding actually accepting the credit card data and if you can't comply, you don't do it under the threat of being sued. To get around the issue, you pass off the user to a 3rd party who takes care of all the PCI compliance and returns the user to you once it's done. Stripe takes the same idea and tweaks it a little... Instead of you receiving the raw card data -- which would enter your PCI compliance nightmare -- it's encrypted before it ever reaches your servers. You then take that encrypted information and submit it using another encryption key in the backend (programatically) to Stripe's servers and receive your response. All the while you should be on an SSL session to encrypt all of your data in transit as well.
This takes care of the PCI compliance where you never touch raw card data so you don't need to comply with all of those rules. Because you can send the data to Stripe in the background like you would with a processing company like Authorize.net, etc. you get to keep the user for the entire process. End result is you look like you're a big business and process the card right then and there on your site without having to pay all the money and headache for PCI compliance.
Better yet, I said it was like Square... 2.9% and $0.30 per transaction. No merchant account, no monthly fees, no setup fees, no minimums, no maximums, and deposits are made every 7 days to your bank account. All you need is to basically use some minor programming to get yourself on your way. It took me awhile to get used to the weird way (to me) that it handles errors, but altogether from starting to read their documentation, to testing/debugging and going live it was about 4 hours total.
This particular one is for collecting payments for remote support. I've touched on how I do it before on here once, I think. I use GoToAssist Expert. Normally you'd just direct them to fastsupport.com, have them enter their code and you're in. Well, I need them to agree to my terms and I want their payment info before I ever touch their computer. So I have a little process...
1. I enter their details for my record and it auto-sends them a link to connect for remote support.
2. They get a shortened link in their email or I can give them the short link over the phone and they get directed to my terms to agree to. After they agree, a copy of the version of terms they agreed to, their name, IP, date/time, etc. all gets saved into a database with the other info for later reference. Then they go to...
3. My payment page. This is where I added the Stripe solution. If the info they enter is correct, it will charge the card, send them to fastsupport.com and auto enter the info you'd normally have the client enter. Basically, they type in their card info and if it's correct, they click next and all-of-a-sudden I'm connected to their computer in less than a minute. If they get something wrong, it just give them an error and has them correct it.
So I now have a fully-integrated, seamless, real-time solution to accept live credit card payments online. I will definitely be trying to integrate this further into other areas. These guys have been around for a few years and have venture capital investments from some big VC firms as well as the founders of PayPal (ironically enough) so I don't see them leaving the scene any time soon. But, I found something that seems pretty good so I'm sharing! Oh! Almost forgot! Right now this is only available in the U.S. BUT, unlike all the other companies, half the people that work at this one are from other countries (including the founder) and are working big time to get it rolled out for other countries. They also want to know who's interested in it in their countries, so be sure to tell them.
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