Can we take loan payments with no products?

[moneytrain]

I have signed up with Authorize.net trying to setup online payment at moneytrain.com/payments.php but our biggest problem is that we don't sell products, we're taking payments that will be different for each customer. Even the simple checkout form Authorize.net provides acts to the customer like they have to enter x number of products multiplied by a dollar amount, right now it's set to $1.00 so to make a $50 payment you enter 50 x $1.00 = $50.00 and it just looks weird. So in Zen Cart how would I go about setting up not items for my cart but a payment with any amount as the option. Any advise would be much appreciated, even if the answer is it can't be done using a shopping cart like this - thanks! confused

[afo]

I don't know if you could do something like that with attributes, but Zen Cart isn't really set up to do what you're asking.

Instead of having 1 $1 "product", you could set up multiple "products" with varying amounts ($100, $50, $25, etc).

[moneytrain]

Considered that idea but because everyone's loan payment will be different we'd have to have a product for every possible amount. Maybe zencart just can't do this, maybe someone can recommend another cart or something else or I'm at a loss. Thanks much :)

[afo]

No, you don't have to have every amount possible as a product. Just do some standard amounts as I suggested. If you have $1, $5, $10, $25, $50, $100 and $500, you can probably make all the necessary payments with only a few "product" amounts, rather than using just $1 and having the customer select 100 or 150 to make the payment. Use differing standard amounts and let the customer build his/her payment from them.

To use your example, someone who wants to make a $50 payment selects 1 $50 payment instead of 50 $1 payments.

[moneytrain]

I see what you're saying, this would work too and thanks for the suggestion. In my case because my employer is being very specific about this he wants it to be like other payments online he's seen, so we need to be able to enter the dollar amount in a field. You may have come up with the most viable option using zencart though, appreciate the pointer