Using CiviCRM you can accept online credit card and paypal payments for events and contributions.You may already have an exisitng payment processor but if you don't here are some things you might think about when selecting one:
- Hosting - Do you want to host payment processing yourself or would you prefer to use a service that is hosting on an external website by a payment processor. The advantage of hosting is that the transaction is more seamless to the end customer. They simply enter their credit card details into a CiviCRM form. The disadvantage is the cost & complexity of having your own ssl certificate. Important: CiviCRM does not support shared SSL. If your payment method requires an SSL certificate, it must be installed on your domain for seamless integration with CiviContribute. CiviCRM is unlikely to recognize SSL provided by your Web host or another domain on your server.
- Regional Availability - For many countries there aren't payment processors written that support their currencies. Paypal is the most widely available option.
- Merchant account vs built in - Most organizations who accept credit card payments will have their own merchant account through a bank but these usually have monthly charges which may not suit smaller organizations. (they generally have lower percentage payments though.). You can expect to pay a fee for the merchant account and to the payment processor (although these may be bundled together). Some, like World Pay & Paypal do not require separate merchant accounts
- COST - Generally which payment processor is cheapest will depend on the number and average size transaction you process. So the question is not which processor is the cheapest but which is the cheapest for you. Commision %, per-transaction charges & fixed monthly charges vary along with set-up costs but in general if you are doing a lot of trade an account with a monthly fee but low commission might be a good option whereas if you only do infrequent transactions you probably should pay be prepared to pay a higher commission but avoid monthly fees.
- Usability - It you use a remotely hosted payment processor you need to consider whether it is easy to use. Paypal Standard is often confusing to end users because they are not sure whether or not they need to create a paypal account.
- Security - If you use an externally hosted payment processor then they take responsibility for all credit card security. CiviCRM does not store any credit card information in the database and does use robust (HTTPS) protocols to receive credit card information. Each payment processor will have a different way of securing transactions between their server and yours but they are all encrypted. So, although the payment processors available with CiviCRM are generally robust, reliable and highly secure you may still prefer to have payment processing off site.
- Support - CiviCRM supports the processors that are incorporated in the core to the extent that they ensure they don't break in upgrades but support and enhancements of community contributed processors are generally expected to come from the community.
Here are the options currently available:
Processor Name |
Type (externally hosting/
SSL on site) |
Recurring
contributions |
Regional
Availability |
Merchant
account required |
Comments |
Website |
Contributed/
supported by? |
|
|
Dummy |
|
|
|
|
For testing |
|
|
|
|
PayPal_Standard |
External |
Yes |
Multi currency - supports just about everywhere |
No |
Accepted Paypal payments too.
Can be confusing for users who only want to pay by credit cards. High abandon rate
There is a delay in withdrawing funds of
3-5 days and withdrawals need to be manually actioned |
|
CiviCRM core team |
|
|
PayPal Pro |
SSL |
Yes |
Multi currency - supports just about everywhere |
|
Recurring contributions require not only a fee to upgrade to "Pro" but an additional fee for the Recurring add-on feature |
|
CiviCRM core team |
|
|
Paypal Express |
SSL on site or paypal off-site? |
|
Multi currency - supports just about everywhere |
|
|
|
CiviCRM core team |
|
|
Google_Checkout |
External |
|
|
|
|
|
?Community contributed? |
|
|
Moneris |
SSL |
Yes |
|
|
|
|
Community contributed |
|
|
Authorize.net |
SSL |
Not fully but search
forums for latest |
|
Yes |
Possibly cheaper through a re-seller than direct (unconfirmed rumour). Only AIM method (not SIM) is supported. Recurring support was written but not kept up to date and so was disabled. Some work has been done on getting it going again but status as at writing is that an edit to allow recurring transactions to be initiated has been identified but not a method to receive updates on these transactions from the Processor |
|
Community contributed |
|
|
PayJunction |
SSL |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
IATS |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Payment Express
(DPS) |
External |
No, Payment Express
can do 'triggered' recurring transations but
there is no CiviCRM support for this |
NZ - this is the most significant card processor in NZ
DPS are certified with banks in Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Singapore, South Africa, USA and United Kingdom. |
Yes |
This option is a good one if you do a lot of transactions (e.g. $1000-$2000 per month)
You can expect to pay a monthly rate for this and possibly a monthy fee to DPS - depending on your bank's package.
If you are in New Zealand Westpac sells this as its WIPS plus product. At time of writing this was cheaper than the other banks.We found that although they told us we needed to have other accounts with Westpac this was primarily a credibility issue and they were prepared to trust us based on our personal history with them.
Both pxaccess & pxpay methods are supported. |
[http://www.paymentexpress.com/index.html
] |
Community contributed (Eileen & Lucas Baker) |
|
|
Paymex |
External |
No |
NZ |
No |
Good kiwi option for low volume. 3.25% & no set up fees but you do need to withdraw your money manually |
|
Paymex have written the code and it is available from their site |
|
|
eWay |
SSL |
No code written but processor can support it |
Australia + ?? |
? |
In Core |
|
Community Contributed (Peter Barwell of Dolphin Software) |
|
|
First Data /
Global Gateway |
SSL |
No code written but processor can support it |
? |
? |
This code is still being tested and is not in the Core yet |
|
Community Contribution (Eileen) |
|
|
Elavon / Nova |
SSL |
No code written but processor can support it |
|
|
In Core |
|
Community Contribution (Eileen) |
|
|
World Pay |
|
|
|
|
Search Forums for latest. Code has been written but not ?yet? available to community |
|
? |
|
|
Sogenactif |
External |
|
|
|
Code under Development |
|
Community Contribution (Eileen) |
|
|
eProcessing Network |
SSL |
No code written but processor can support it |
|
Yes |
Offers emulation of Authorize.NetTM. Does not support recurring payments using Emulation mode. |
http://www.eprocessingnetwork.com/Utilities.html |
|
|
|
Quickbooks Merchant Services |
SSL |
Not yet |
|
Yes |
In Development. Check back soon! Contact us for collaboration or funding. |
|
Community Contributed (Shawn) |
|
|
*Note that 'triggered recurring' refers to where a processor retains the authorization on the credit card and will recharge it on request. This is not currently implemented in civiCRM.
Click on the appropriate link below for information on set-up for your processor of choice.
This page will be updated as support for additional processors becomes available. If you are interested in developing a plug-in for another processor - review this page. Then contact the CiviCRM development team at civicrm-dev@lists.civicrm.org if you need further guidance.
 | Configuring SSL for Your Online Contribution Pages
If you select a payment processor configuration where users are entering their credit card information in a form on your site (such as PayPal Pro, Authorize.net, PayJunction or Moneris), you will also need to configure your web-server and CivCRM to support SSL (secure encrypted) pages.
Check with your server administrator or hosting service for information on obtaining an SSL certificate and configuring your web server to support SSL encrypted pages (more info...|CRM:SSL Configuration for Apache and CiviCRM].
Once you have verified that you can access pages in your site using _https://yoursite.org/_ then configure CiviCRM to redirect all online contribution pages to use SSL:
- Navigate to Administer CiviCRM » Global Settings » Resource URLs
- Set Force Secure URLs (SSL) to YES and save your change.
- Verify the new setting by clicking Test-drive or Live Page from Administer CiviCRM » Configure Online Contribution Pages. Your contribution forms should automatically redirect to https://... and you should see the encryption (lock) symbol in your browser.
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