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Payment Gateway Complications


Big Gee

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Hi All.

I've been setting up an on-line jewellery store for my son (please click HERE).

Everything is fine, nicely customised revved up and ready to go. BUT I've run into a log-jam with Braintree PayPal. I had installed the Braintree extension, went through the Braintree questionnaire, and made a test purchase, everything seemed OK but the payment stalled somewhere. I contacted Braintree and got told that we need to make one completed purchase before the system was fully functional. I thought it a bit strange, but carried on. Made another test purchase, this time the amount got taken from the credit/ debit card account with the bank, but didn't show up as a payment in the PayPal account. More phone calls and a lot of ducking & weaving and a reluctance to divulge anything by Braintree. A few days later a refund for the test purchase was refunded into the card account used for the test purchase. It was getting curiouser and curiouser.

Today someone from Ireland contacted us to say that Braintree had declined the service to us! When asked why we were told that it was because on-line jewellery sites are considered high risk???? Consequently we can't use the Braintree payment gateway. When pushed further on this issue, the person on the other end simply answered "I don't know". When asked what payment gateway they would suggest instead of Braintree we were told that we should contact PayPal to set up a 'Pro' (?) service that costs £20.00 per month! I know it's not a lot, but WHY - again we got the "I don't know reply".

I'm posting the tale of woe on here to see if anyone has past experience of a similar nature, and if so perhaps they can throw some light on the matter, as Braintree seem too tight lipped to give any in depth explanation.

Maybe someone on here can suggest a solution or recommend a gateway that I can use which works well & doesn't cost the earth.

Thanks,

G.

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I have no solution that could be useful to you.

But, www.paypalsucks.com collects complaints, although it seems nothing new since over a year ago.

From their site, you may find a reference to Merchant Inc (copyright PayPal Alternative).

On that site, you may find a link to "High Risk Credit Card Processing Services".

As far as Jewellery being "high risk", I suppose they have the history to back it up. (But why they didn't lay all this out on the questionnaire, I dunno.) Kinda like the auto insurance industry - "What?!!  You are saying my 19 year-old son is a high-risk driver with absolutely no proof? And that is supposed to justify his rates being five times higher than mine?"

Do your due diligence.

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If you already have a PayPal account until you sort out which method to use maybe Paypal Standard will work? You would need to make it clear at checkout that they don't need a PapPal account to pay and that credit card payments can be made with PayPal. 

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Thanks Brian, Al  & ayz1.

How can one type of goods be more of a risk when processing payments than another type of goods?  What miffs me more is that Braintree have had a bit of a secretive involvement in all of this. They have been vague and not very transparent, cagey is the word I would use. Yet they tell us that PayPal (who owns Braintree) can offer a service as long as you pay for it - even giving us a phone number to talk to someone from their Website Payments Pro - Payment Gateway team. So how does that compound on the 'risk' factor? Surely if selling jewellery on-line is a higher security risk, then the risk remains the same whether the transaction is through PayPal's other gateway services or through their Braintree system.

I've considered Stripe, the only thing that holds me back is that PayPal is such a popular method of payment and is better recognised by the public. Most people have some experience of using PayPal (eBay etc.) and tend to trust it better when dealing with a small unknown concern selling on-line. When paying someone like Amazon they trust the selling company - regardless of the method used for payment, because of the size of the company doing the selling But possibly needs must and we may land up with Stripe in the end (assuming they don't also have issues with certain types of businesses).  Where the 'high risk' comes in I don't know.

It then dawned on me (a little Eureka moment) - it could have something to do with the three domain (3D) secure  feature. The 3D service moves responsibility away from the payments recipient  it's called  'Liability Shift'. They say the main benefit to companies using the 3D Secure scheme is the availability of a liability shift for a successfully verified transaction, but that's just a bit of candy, the main key reason is it offers protection by the card issuers against chargebacks as the liability is assumed. Interesting.

So I guess Braintree don't implement 3D but PayPal's 'Website Payments Pro' probably does, and then charges £20/ month for the privilege.  Hmm Stripe is starting to look a lot more tempting all of a sudden. I'm still annoyed at Braintree's lack of clarity and transparency in all of this. Why not come clean and tell people up front, instead of messing about with vague answers and wasting the site owner's valuable time? I still can't see how an on-line jewellery store is assessed as a higher security risk though.

Why is life made so unnecessarily complicated these days?

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53 minutes ago, Big Gee said:

LOL! Yep - you've hit the nail squarely on it's head Brian. Corporate money and flaming LAWYERS! Not much room to live a simple & quiet life outside of the greedy madness anymore.

= Brexit & Trump. :)

Looks like the Catalonians want a change too.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 28/10/2017 at 6:34 AM, Al Brookbanks said:

Oh dear. Sorry to hear this. What about Stripe? We have a nice integration for that with 3D secure support.

I've downloaded the 'Stripe' extension in the Cube Cart back office. I've opened an account with Stripe and everything is verified, however I'm having a few problems.

I presume that all the coding provided by Stripe for the creation of a checkout page is already catered for as functions within the Stripe dashboard in the Cube Cart integration extension for Stripe? I've got the API 'test' & 'live' keys from Stripe, and inputted them into the appropriate fields in the CC extension's dashboard. I can test run payments in 'Test' mode, but cannot get payments to work in 'Live' mode. Any suggestions?

I've gone through most of the documentation in the dashboard created for the account I've set-up on the Stripe site, but I have to admit I'm finding it rather tough going, because it it is very technically heavy, and seems to be geared to developers using the system from the ground up, and not for people like me who are working with an integration module within the CC environment. I've never used Stripe before so I'm starting from a low base of knowledge, as it is all very unfamiliar to me.

Can I ask for a few tips on what I need to do please? If I can't get it to work I'll have to contact Stripe's technical support. However I thought it would be a good idea to pass the problem by you guys first. One of you will probably have a working knowledge of using Stripe with CC.

Incidentally the domain used for the 'shop' does not have an SSL certificate. I doubt if this is a problem, because I presume that all sensitive data is transmitted and received by Stripe's servers and no sensitive data would be stored on my server. Is this correct? Or does integration with the Snipe payment gateway require an SSL certified connection to function?

Thanks,

G.

 

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Thanks Al,

I presume the account has been approved/ certified. When I go to our account on Stripe's site and log-in, the Stripe dashboard shows that all necessary requirements are certified.

If I try to make a test purchase in 'Test' mode (checked in the gateway module on our site) I firstly get this page when I progress to 'checkout' :

5a084c828df5b_Screenshot-2017-11-12WelshGoldsJewelleryShop-2.png.471c15c47c0daef0af84e974945b5f8e.png

When the card details are inputted & the "Make Payment" button clicked I get a blank white page.

When a test purchase is attempted with the test mode box unchecked in the payment gateway module (live mode), I get this page, which as you can see does not allow card details to be inputted:

5a084d7c62abf_Screenshot-2017-11-12WelshGoldsJewelleryShop.png.0c5250398f38ccac908d3bc25cf8031b.png

Does that shed any light on the problem for you?

Thanks,

G.

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No joy?

Anyway, I'm still struggling :-(

Just a quick update. On trying to make a test mode transaction (see the first screenshot above). I'm finding that when I enter the hypothetical card No. for test purchases issued by Stripe, after entering 4242 4242 - (or similar) as soon as the second set of numbers are typed a 'Zip' code field appears. This field will only accept US codes. When an UK post code is inserted it ignores the letters (e.g. AA11 2BB) only 11 will be shown in the field.

scrnshot_zip_code_field.png.da746739605d0739f193c7d9f9d6e0ab.png

 

I can't see why this happens. I've even unticked the Post code/ Zip code required tick box in the Stripe extension module on the site, but it still requests a Zip code at the checkout. Any ideas why? Am I missing something obvious here? Or is it a setting that needs to be changed on the Stripe dashboard for the account on their site. 

I'm stuck, because I can't get replies from Stripe, as the e-mail address used to set the account up is on my son's e-mail programme on his lap-top and he's gone away to visit a sick relative.  So whilst I can contact Stripe I don't have access to their replies. HELP!

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We have a couple of clients using Stripe with no problems and use Stripe ourselves (not via CubeCart though but through our Hosting Billing software) and have to say they are a fantastic company to deal with - support is helpful and responsive and they are much cheaper than PayPal.

Are you using the latest versions of the gateway and if CubeCart itself ? I don’t have the plugin installed on our test store so will have a go at doing that for you

Ian

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Hi Ian,

Thank you very much for that (I was beginning to wonder if I'd become invisible!).

As it happens we  had a reply response from Stripe's technical support team yesterday. Here's a copy of the contents:

Quote

 

Thank you for reaching out. My name is Brian and I would be more than happy to help.

I was hoping to speak to you over the phone, however I was unable to get a hold of you over the phone. As such I will follow up here.

I have reviewed your screenshots and the description that you have provided. The core issue here is that the Stripe checkout has been incorrectly integrated into your website. I'm afraid that the only person who would be able to resolve this would be your developer, although the Stripe checkout might work in test mode it appears that over all that there are more outstanding issues as you are unable to click anything this would mean that the entire webpage will have to be analysis for any conflicting logic or incorrect coding. As the test mode works it that indicates what ever changes you make when moving over to live mood are effecting not just the checkout but the webpage itself. Swapping from test to live API keys, can't effect your website but what logic your developer is using appears to be not working.

I would strong get int touch with your developer, they will review have to review the logs of the website changes to see what is conflicting.

If you have any question just let me know.

Best,

Brian

 

From what Brian from Stripe has written, it would appear that the core problem lies within the Stripe payment gateway extension developed by Cube Cart. Whether it's an inherent problem in the CC developers Stripe extension, or possibly a glitch encountered by a corrupted download I don't know. My first reaction is to delete the downloaded extension and start again, however I thought it would beprudent to get comments from the CC community before I embark on anything 'new'.

Thanks,

Gwilym.

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Sorry... Most of my time is spent on the help desk I don't get enough time to look at the forums often. The code for live and test mode is the same so this is rather puzzling. What's more is that we have a lot of merchants using this integration in live mode.

I don't have a suggestion without deep investigation.

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Thanks Al,

Have you got time for a bit of 'deep investigation'?

For the time being, would you agree that it would be a good idea to totally delete the current Stripe extension, download it again, and give it a second airing?.After all it could have been a corrupted download. This is especially the case as Stripe can see nothing wrong at their end and suggest that it's a site developer's problem (meaning CC in their context, as the extension has been developed by CC programmers).  Conversely, CC maintains that the Stripe gateway is perfectly fit for purpose. So the weak link would appear to possibly be a corrupted download of the original extension.

G.

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  • 2 months later...

I've hit the same problem. I already had a Stripe account, using it on another site, and with no problems. But the CC Stripe module seems to be only allowing a US Zip code.

However, whatever the cause of the problem is with Test mode, it does work just fine when set to Live mode. So it isn't a catastrophe. Just needs a warning that Test mode has a ZIP fixation that goes away in Live mode.

 

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Thank you so much for that hairydog. As I hadn't received a response on here since November, and obviously Al has not got any feedback from Richmond, I'd given up on the problem.

However what you've said will rekindle my interest in trying to resolve things. The site is still not functional because of the problem.

Many thanks to you. I'll let you know if I can get it on it's feet.

All the best,

G.

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Just installed the latest version of the Stripe gateway onto our demo store (https://www.cubecart-demo.co.uk), configured it with Test card details and processed a test payment without any issues using a UK address but also tried it using a Spanish address and we have customers in both UK and Spain using it without any issues.

If you are trying to test it, you must have your Stripe account in Test mode in order to view the test key details and those must be entered in the gateway configuration plus the test mode tick box must be ticked.  You also have to use Stripe validated test cards specific to the country for the address https://stripe.com/docs/testing#international-cards as you cannot use live card details.

The card details entry could look a little better in my opinion but otherwise this is a fantastic module and works well.  It has 3D validation integrated and Stripe are a dream to work with (unlike PayPal who in all my dealings are a PITA) as well as being a lot cheaper.

Ian

PS - feel free to create an order on our test store and go through and make a payment to see it works

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8 minutes ago, Al Brookbanks said:

Nice to hear 3Ds is working well. 

Yes it is - 3D in test mode uses a USA based test card so it has to accept a Zip code (rather than UK postcode which cannot be entered). In test mode you get sent to a page where you can accept or decline teh 3D secure details and accepting works perfectly with a fully paid order at the end of it.

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  • 9 months later...
On 10/28/2017 at 2:17 AM, Big Gee said:

Hi All.

I've been setting up an on-line jewellery store for my son (please click HERE).

Everything is fine, nicely customised revved up and ready to go. BUT I've run into a log-jam with Braintree PayPal. I had installed the Braintree extension, went through the Braintree questionnaire, and made a test purchase, everything seemed OK but the payment stalled somewhere. I contacted Braintree and got told that we need to make one completed purchase before the system was fully functional. I thought it a bit strange, but carried on. Made another test purchase, this time the amount got taken from the credit/ debit card account with the bank, but didn't show up as a payment in the PayPal account. More phone calls and a lot of ducking & weaving and a reluctance to divulge anything by Braintree. A few days later a refund for the test purchase was refunded into the card account used for the test purchase. It was getting curiouser and curiouser.

Today someone from Ireland contacted us to say that Braintree had declined the service to us! When asked why we were told that it was because on-line jewellery sites are considered high risk???? Consequently we can't use the Braintree payment gateway. When pushed further on this issue, the person on the other end simply answered "I don't know". When asked what payment gateway they would suggest instead of Braintree we were told that we should contact PayPal to set up a 'Pro' (?) service that costs £20.00 per month! I know it's not a lot, but WHY - again we got the "I don't know reply".

I'm posting the tale of woe on here to see if anyone has past experience of a similar nature, and if so perhaps they can throw some light on the matter, as Braintree seem too tight lipped to give any in depth explanation.

Maybe someone on here can suggest a solution or recommend a gateway that I can use which works well & doesn't cost the earth.

Thanks,

G.

There are a lot of payment gateways that provide services for high-risk businesses.

Payspacelv

Payoneer

Authorize.net

are some of them

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