Restrictions on integrating with 3rd party payment gateways?

[samudranb]

Hey all!

I had a few queries regarding the restrictions that s2member has on integrations with 3rd party payment gateways.

I did go through the forums, but this was not really helpful and this was too old (at least i felt so because the posts talk about the Pro version just coming out, and that they only supported PayPal back then ) Still, it is possible that I missed something, and if that is the case, apologies!

I am planning to have a site which integrates with an yet undecided payment gateway. I cannot have any of the ones that are officially supported (or at least the ones mentioned on the front page of s2member.com). Paypal is not supported in India (some issues with the federal bank).

That is why, I would like to know:
1. Are there any restrictions to what kind of payment gateways s2member can be integrated with? E.g. do I need some basic structure to the api calls, or maybe a particular architecture (REST / JSON/ what have you)? Since I have not yet settled on a payment gateway, I could use this to select the one with which the integration will be the easiest.

2. In case the payment gateway does not support recurring payments, is there any existing functionality that I can use to create "recurring payments" on the s2member end?

3. Is there a standard guide / wiki to integrating with other payment gateways? It would be really helpful for a lot of others, methinks!

Actually, although the forum is really great, I feel a wiki would also be very useful for newbies to s2member. I know I would love to see some guides / wikis / etc

[Cristián Lávaque]

Here's another thread that talks about integrating new gateways: viewtopic.php?f=36&t=3154

There's not tutorial for integration with new gateways yet. s2Member doesn't manage the payments, that's done by the gateway, which then informs s2Member about it.

I hope that helps a bit.

[samudranb]

Thanks Christan! I had missed that thread completely!

That thread did make it a little bit clearer.. but I just wanted to be sure I got it correct: One can integrate 3rd party payment gateways, as long as they provide a Paypal like interface?

More specifically:

1. To be able to use "WP Admin -> s2Member -> PayPal Options -> PayPal IPN Integration -> IPN w/ Proxy Key", we need:

a. the 3rd-party application must be sending IPN transactions
b. Must ALWAYS include the custom POST variable and that variable must always start with your installation domain ( i.e. custom=yoursite.com ) <-- WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS?
c. the item_number variable, must always match a format that s2Member looks for. ("1", "2" etc) - more info on this can be found by looking at the code generated by the "Paypal button generator".
d. Any other restrictions on what kind of gateways CANNOT be used for this method?

2. It CAN be integrated with other 3rd party PGs who do not offer IPN-like systems, using the "WP Admin -> s2Member -> API / Scripting -> Pro API for Remote Operations" <-- HAVE I UNDERSTOOD THIS CORRECTLY? CAN THESE API BE USED WITH *ANY* PAYMENT GATEWAYS?

Please let me know if my understanding is correct. If it is wrong or incomplete, please point me in the correct direction!

[Jason Caldwell]

Thanks for the heads up on this thread.

It looks you've gathered most of the relevant information.

Just to clarify a bit. Integrating s2Member with another Payment Gateway does not require that other Payment Gateway to send IPNs exactly like PayPal does. In fact, it doesn't require that the other Payment Gateway send IPNs at all. It just requires that whoever is integrating the additional Payment Gateway for you, to understand how PayPal IPNs work, so that communication from whatever Payment Gateway you're integrating can be converted to the PayPal IPN standard, and communicated to s2Member via its Proxy IPN handler, which is mentioned in your Dashboard here:

s2Member -> PayPal Options -> IPN Integration -> IPN w/ Proxy Key

While it is certainly possible to integrate other Payment Gateways by connecting to the s2Member Pro Remote Operations API, I would not advise going this route just yet. The s2Member Pro Remote Operations API is currently only capable of creating new Users/Members, it is not yet capable of editing/deleting existing Users/Members.

I would suggest that if you intend to integrate another Payment Gateway with s2Member, that you use the IPN w/ Proxy Key methodology, thereby increasing flexiblity. s2Member's IPN handler can receive IPN responses standardized by PayPal, which allow for events to be processed by s2Member. Such as signups, cancellations, refunds, EOTs, etc. All based on the documentation in your Dashboard, under: s2Member -> PayPal Options -> IPN Integration -> IPN w/ Proxy Key, and in the PayPal reference guide: http://www.s2member.com/paypal-ipn-pdt-vars