continuous authority via Actinic Payments

[fleetwood]

Has anyone any experience with setting up recurring payments using a continuous authority via Actinic Payments.

What I am after is customer logs cards details with gateway on first order, and then the same details can be used to take future variable amounts (eg to finance a subscription), without the customer needing to place a new order.

I know about needing a separate merchant ID, and the need to adhere to regulations regarding notifying customer of amounts, rights to cancel etc

What I don't know is if this can be run via the Actinic Payments gateway, and how. Support are looking into it, but seem a bit unsure themselves.

[cbarling]

SellerDeck use it for charging subscription payments for Cover, SellerDeck Hosting, Actinic Payments etc!

Unfortunately the answer is it is possible but it requires bespoke coding, which isn't accessible to SellerDeck customers.

Chris

[fleetwood]

Thanks for the reply Chris.

Is this custom coding work something that could be could be purchased from yourselves, or it likley to be something that would be offered as a software upgrade?

We pay something like £400 a year for a support contract (which I think I have only ever called on 2-3 times over the past 10 years, and for very simple enquiries). Whilst I know support isn't for custom work, it would be nice to get something back for the thousands so far shelled out, other than just program upgrades.

The alternative means we then have to look for a separate gateway just to handle this type of transaction, or possibly move everything over, which seems a shame.

Support suggested that we could leave a customer order open, and keep adding to it each month, in order to make additional subscription like charges. If we were to do this, 1) is this considered OK practice? and 2) do you know how long the original payment details remain active? Assuming the customer has funds, and we were to notify them prior to taking payment, do these details remain active infinitum?

[cbarling]

Realistically I don't think we could easily do make the changes. There isn't any code in SellerDeck for this. There is code in Express which we use to bill our customers but Express Billing isn't available, and would take quite a bit of development work to do so as it now runs as a stand-alone system.

You could use the approach that support suggested. I believe, but am not 100% sure, that Creditcall allow a further payment to be taken for up to 3 months after the first. I imagine that clock is reset once the next payment is taken.

There are two problems with recurring payments:
- you are not allowed to store the CV2 and when you re-submit without a CV2, you can get an additional percentage charge
- the card can expire

Continuous authority completely cures the second point. You would think it would cure the first too but in our case it hasn't. You have to apply for an exemption for submitting "insecure transactions" (even though you previously submitted a transaction with a CV2 from the same customer) and our bank hasn't granted us this. Instead they charge us an extra percentage on every CA payment.

I'm actually incandescent with rage about this, but try not to think about it! We can solve the problem by moving banks but in the scheme of priorities, this isn't yet the top one yet as the rates we have been offered by other banks are higher, so the saving isn't that much.

Thought you might be interested in the details.

Chris

[fleetwood]

Thanks for the open response Chris, and yes, I do appreciate the details.

It looks like I have my work cut out trying to establish this additional payment method. Paypal, who we don't currently use, claim they offer easy to use recurring payments, but my research suggests otherwise. Whilst I have not gone into the finer details, I think it may well be a case of sales promising more than can actually be delivered, but we shall see. I have to find some way of proceeding with this!

When I questioned my current provider of merchant services about all this, they said I would need two additional merchant accounts to operate continuous authority (one initial purchase, and a separate one for the continuous bit). As AP are providing my current gateway, and you can't provide access to continuous authority, that, I could not use the merchant account that process the AP payments as one account, and need two all new accounts (with two extra sets of charges).

I think banks pretty much annoy everyone universally, and especially in their relationship to business customers, who I am sure, are seen as easy pickings. They provide an 'essential' set of services, so most people just pay up and be damned. I for one go out of my way to minimize my bank charges. This sometimes makes extra work for myself, but gives me the satisfaction of not paying over more than I have to!