This has been on our ToDo list ever since we introduced the 50meg account. We've had numerous emails from subscribers who would rather use a payment service provider like PayPal when dealing with small subscription amounts, rather than using their credit or debit cards.It was an interesting challenge to integrate PayPal into the current subscription workflow. We needed to be mindful that subscribers could be changing from paying by card to PayPal or vice-versa so obviously we wanted to avoid double charging. myVersionControl accepts payments in 3 currencies (USD, EUR and GBP) so this added an extra level of complexity too.
What we came up with was rather simple in the end. First we have the Account Home page which details your last and next payment, along with your chosen payment method and an option to change it:
The payment details page shows the account you are paying your subscription from, whether that be your PayPal or Debit/Credit card.
You then have an opportunity to add credit or debit card details. If you are just looking to upgrade and stick with PayPal as your subscription method, then any one of the package options on the upgrade tab will take you to the relevant PayPal subscription page.
I want to say a bit on the look and feel of the UI at the moment. It was tempting while putting in the PayPal subscription engine to freshen up these pages - but have you ever heard the expression about putting lipstick on a pig?We've already embarked on a complete overhaul of the look, feel and functionality of the control panel. It's all part of a wider plan we're working to. So we decided the goal here was to get the engine right so it could be ported to the new interface without too much rework and offer the PayPal subscription functionality in a way that fits with the (dated) UI we have on offer at the moment.
The new PayPal subscription service is due for release on Monday 16th March 2009.
1 comment:
Paypal payments have now been deployed. All looking ok. We'll do an annoucement about it at the end of the week, but for now it's a softly softly approach incase anything breaks (not that we're expecting it to).
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