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:
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?
Whoa, 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?
It'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.
For 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.
> 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!
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
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?