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Since March 2013, I've been working on building a payment system to sell products for my business. It started out as a modified version of Stripe Checkout. And,
by singer 13y ago
Since March 2013, I've been working on building a payment system to sell products for my business. It started out as a modified version of Stripe Checkout. And, from there, I bolted on a full-featured back-end to manage the checkout and collected payments.
I named my payment system "Snappy Checkout". Here's an example of how I use it on one of my websites:
https://www.snappycheckout.com/pay?E13DZ319DJ1SJCNDH2JDP1 https://www.snappycheckout.com/pay?E13DZ319DJ1SJCNDH2JDP1
After adding a few lines of JavaScript, the checkout can also be launched directly from any website that uses HTTPS.
Here are some differences from other checkouts I've used:
- Both Stripe and PayPal payments can be accepted. I prefer Stripe over PayPal (API-wise), but I didn't want to switch soley to Stripe because a lot of people still like paying with PayPal.
- When a payment is received, a number of checks are run to determine if it's possibly fraudulent. I'm using the term "possibly" because it's hard to programatically determine a payment is fraudulent at 100% accuracy. So far though, I've found Snappy Checkout's detection to be accurate when scanning payments that I've received.
- If selling digital products, files are stored in your own Dropbox account. I suppose there could be pluses and minuses here. But, I prefer to allow people to control their own files.
- Snappy Checkout offers a variety of payments -- including one-time payments, discounted payments, subscriptions, subscriptions with a trial period prior to the first payment, and the option to split a payment over several months.
- Both Stripe and PayPal payments can be viewed, searched, and refunded from the Snappy Checkout dashboard.
- The cost is 2.9% + 80¢ per sale. Most people are charging a percentage of the sale price on top of the credit card processing fee.
I think others will find this can work for their business too. What do you think?
- marcomassaro 13y agoHow does it work with digital products? After payment receipt you a show a download link from the persons dropbox? For physical products - is there a custom form to collect shipping & billing? Nice work!
- singer 13y agoFor digital products, a download link is included in the emailed receipt. I use the Dropbox API to create a temporary download link that is active for 4 hours. I don't expose the Dropbox link though. Instead, the customer clicks a Snappy Checkout link and I redirect them to the Dropbox link. That extra step is in there because I check the customer's IP address to ensure it's the same on every download attempt. If the IP address changes, I send the customer a new download link via email. I know it's not possible to stop sharing files across the Internet. I think this process does a good job of preventing it -- without adding too much grief. When purchasing a product that is shipped, shipping fields will appear below the credit card information fields.
- chime 13y ago> That extra step is in there because I check the customer's IP address to ensure it's the same on every download attempt. If the IP address changes, I send the customer a new download link via email. That is a very clever solution to a very difficult problem. I love it!
- TuxLyn 13y agoLove it, I've just registered ^_^ Thanks.
- the_watcher 13y agoWhoa, this looks pretty fantastic to me. Have you thought about integrating with Shopify? It has a lot of trouble with recurring payments, and Chargify is a pain to use and adds an additional $60/month charge on top of the Shopify fees (it is still worth it, but Shopify having simpler recurring payments would be amazing). This looks like exactly what I was looking for about a year ago when I add recurring payments to my store. EDIT: After signing up, I see integrating with Shopify isn't even necessary. Do you plan to compete with them? Or potentially be a feature to work with them?
- singer 13y agoIsn't Shopify mostly targeting people who want to sell multiple items via a shopping cart and/or host their product website at Shopify?
- the_watcher 13y agoIt's targeting people who want to be able to put together a store very simply and quickly (at least that is why I used it). It definitely has a weakness on recurring payments (pretty much the only thing Volusion does better, in my opinion), but other than that it is pretty fantastic in terms of connectability and ease.