With the launch of Version 2 of ConceptShare some of you may have noticed that the payment pages are now hosted on our servers (securely), and we communicate with our payment gateway provider behind the scenes.  We much prefer this approach as opposed to having the customer leave the site, and go the merchant for payment processing, which breaks the whole user experience.

One thing we didn’t account for was the headaches involved with finding a payment gateway that meets all of our needs. Guess what, we never really found one, we just had to settle for the “best fit” and do customizations on top of it.  Luckily, being well versed in systems and software integrations I was excited at the prospect.

My “ideal” gateway would support the following feature set from a programming stand-point:

• Callback URLs for all transaction types (regular and reoccurring).
• Membership/reoccurring management without client interaction (we’ll handle that, thanks).
• Regular transaction processing.
• Full customization of the user-experience (i.e. all pages hosted on our servers).
• Full featured back-end (back-office) for the finance department.
• Modern methods of communication (i.e. Web-services, XML). Requiring me to install a COM object, or use flat URL posting isn’t what I consider ideal.
• Fully customizable emails, or at the very least localizable emails.
• Flexible reporting options and report generation including various export options (CSV, XML, etc.)
• Solid, complete documentation of all APIs.
• Multiple currencies / merchant accounts.
• Good, quick, and knowledgeable support staff.

I have a hard time resisting the urge to bold and underline that last requirement.  Fortunately, our current gateway provider is very pro-active, quick to respond (usually less than 2 hours via email), friendly and knowledgeable.

We surveyed many gateways and narrowed it down to about eight different gateways in our quest to find “the one”. Each would cover about 80%-90% of the feature list, but would always come up short in one way or another. 

Our new system is definitely more flexible and scalable. We can now look at allowing domain administrators the ability to look at their transaction history, update credit card information, etc. All from the convenience of their ConceptShare account (this feature is still in development).

I find that this area is still in its infancy, as payment gateways are usually started by banks and other institutions not ready to embrace the Internet market and technologies.  I wouldn’t say it was a nightmare to code a fully-customizable gateway but it could have gone a lot easier if there was a good one-stop, all encompassing gateway provider.

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