MerchantAnywhere payment gateway - anyone using?

[silverthorneinc]

Hi,

I've got a merchant account with MerchantAnywhere.com, so I'd like to use them for my online shop as well. I see from archives that there is a merchantanywhere_zen.zip payment module from them, written by networkdad.

Is anyone using this module in a production environment? Are there any known issues with it, or perhaps later versions of the code available?

Thanks,
Mike
Silverthorne, Inc.

[rmcnicholas]

I have just posted new versions of the Merchant Anywhere payment module. One for Zencart 1.3.7 and newer and one for Zencart 1.3.6 and prior. I have used Zencart with MerchantAnywhere for several years with no problems.

[silverthorneinc]

I have just posted new versions of the Merchant Anywhere payment module. One for Zencart 1.3.7 and newer and one for Zencart 1.3.6 and prior. I have used Zencart with MerchantAnywhere for several years with no problems.

Thanks! I'm definitely going to use your code in my shop once it's ready to go live.

Since you have several years experience working with them, would you mind answering some more business-related questions about using MA for payment?

I know most of the shops I buy from online don't charge the card until the product ships. I haven't found a way to get MA set up to let me do that. Do you have a way around that, or do you not have problems charging immediately?

Have you ever taken pre-orders with MA for items that might not ship for 30 days or more? If so, how do you handle that?

Thanks,
Mike

[rmcnicholas]

Per Merchant.Anywhere.com:
"The gateway does not support Authorize-Only transactions. An Authorize-Only transaction will expire in 3 to 14 days depending on the card issuing bank, so an authorization today will not guarantee funds when your product is ready to ship 30 days later. Authorization-Only is for use by Hotels, Restaurants, Bars, etc that know that they will close the transaction in a short period of time.

MerchantAnywhere.com also has automatic batch closure (each night) as Visa/MC impose up to a 1.5% surcharge for delayed batching (batching more than 48 hours after the authorization) to prevent this procedure."

All that said, how do the big boys do it?
They have accredited network security systems that allow them to retain the cardholder's information and process the transaction when it is ready to ship. This accreditation costs tens of thousands of dollars per quarter to maintain.

It would be violation of your merchant agreement to write a payment module which retained cardholder data, since there is no security accreditation with Zencart.

Can it be done?
The only way I see to do what you want is to use the repeating payment gateway. The payment module would need to create a repeating payment with a single occurrence scheduled, say 60 days out. This would capture all the cardholder data into the gateway and return a transaction ID. It would not, however, provide any guarantee that the cardholder had the funds to complete the purchase. This would have to be checked when you were ready to ship.

Then when you are ready to ship, the payment module (through an admin menu) would allow pulling in the transaction date to the current day by sending a transaction modification to the gateway. The transaction would batch that night and you could ship the next day after you checked that the transaction was approved.

This would be implementable, although complicated. Also there would be an additional $10.00/month MerchantAnywhere account fee for access to the recurring transaction gateway.

In my case, I have an art business where I make the product when ordered. The cardholder is charged immediately and I ship within a day or two. So, this has not been an issue for me, although I fully understand what you’re trying to do and why.

[tshirtman]

I just install my Zen Cart but having problems with merchantanywhere account.
I am not getting the results back from the bank. No Invoice nor is it showing up in admin as an order. But it is showing in the Credit card showing it process.

[rmcnicholas]

Are other payment options working? If not, then you may be missing a zen-cart file from uploading/setting up your site. If other forms are working, then check to ensure both the files for merchant anywhere are in the correct locations.

It sounds like you are calling the merchant anywhere code to process the credit card, but the zen-cart module that is called on success/failure/declined is not being called. A test would be to use the dummy credit card number with a test purchase. If you put in any name, 4111111111111111 as the account number, and any future date as the expiration, then merchant anywhere should return a Declined error and you should return to the checkout page to try another cc. Also, if there is a timeout accessing the gateway because of a slow internet connection or some other error, then the module should return with an error message and return you to the checkout page to try again.

If its still not working, then please provide more details:
1. Version of zen-cart.
2. Version of merchant anywhere download (there are two versions depending on which version of zen-cart you're using).