Forum OpenACS Q&A: Status of e-Commerce now that OACS is in beta

1: Status of e-Commerce now that OACS is in beta

Posted by Hamilton Chua on 04/16/02 01:48 PM

Hello,

I would like to know the status of the ecommerce module now that OACS
4.0 is in beta.

Regards

2: Response to Status of e-Commerce now that OACS is in beta (response to 1)

Posted by Simon Carstensen on 04/17/02 10:14 PM

Well, according to the project status document (https://openacs.org/new-file-storage/download/status.html?version_id=410), the package status is TESTING. I'm using it on my development machine, and it works pretty well. It's still ACS3-based, though.

Janine Sisk and Bart Teeuwisse, do you know when you'll be finished working on the payment gateways?

Does anyone know when the ACS4-based ecommcerce package will be released and who is working on it?

Simon

3: Response to Status of e-Commerce now that OACS is in beta (response to 1)

Posted by Bart Teeuwisse on 04/17/02 10:40 PM

The ecommerce package is currently being revised to replace the legacy CyberCash interface with a generic payment service contract. The first implementations of the payment sercice contract are a gateway to Verisign's PayflowPro by Janine Sisk and a gateway to Authorize.net that I'm developing.

I'm also the one working on the ecommerce package. The package is OACS 3.x based and will remain so for the near future. However, I am fixing bugs and cleaning up the code as I work on the new payment interface. I am also planning on migrating the ecommerce template system to the ACS templating system. (See Migrating ecommerce templates to ATS.)

Replacing the CyberCash interface is a large scale modification involving changes to many files. Because of this, I'm holding any commits to the OACS CVS tree till I have completed and tested the new payment interface. I expect to be ready to commit to the tree by first half of May.

4: Response to Status of e-Commerce now that OACS is in beta (response to 1)

Posted by Hamilton Chua on 04/18/02 04:38 PM

Thanks very much for responding. Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that most of what remains to be done are with regards to the user interface and the payment gateway.

Is it safe to presume that the db model will pretty much stay the way it is ?

I am working on a project right now that needs to record products and I intend to use the ecommerce db model particularly the products tables.

The project has plans to go into ecommerce but not at the moment so I am looking to use the administration side of ecommerce.

5: Response to Status of e-Commerce now that OACS is in beta (response to 1)

Posted by Bart Teeuwisse on 04/18/02 11:22 PM

The database model will not change much. All db changes that I'm currently working on relate to the payment interface, e.g. cybercash_log, ec_financial_transactions and ec_creditcards.

The products table remains unchanged.

6: Response to Status of e-Commerce now that OACS is in beta (response to 1)

Posted by Simon Carstensen on 04/19/02 01:34 PM

Researching Verisign's Payflow Pro payment service, I found their pricing to be:

Up to 500 Monthly Transactions: $19.95/month and a $179 Setup Fee
Under 1,000 Monthly Transactions: $59.95/month and a $249 Setup Fee

Additional transactions are charged at 10 cents per transaction.

Looking at Authorize.net, I was unable to locate their prices. Does anyone know what these are?

Additionally, why did you decide to replace CyberCash with these 2 new payment services?

7: Response to Status of e-Commerce now that OACS is in beta (response to 1)

Posted by Sam Snow on 04/19/02 03:39 PM

Simon, Take a look at these three threads for more info on why those two payment services for ecommerce were chosen.

https://openacs.org/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000239&topic_id=12&topic=OpenACS%204%2e0%20Design

https://openacs.org/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0002TD&topic_id=11&topic=OpenACS

https://openacs.org/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00016C

8: Response to Status of e-Commerce now that OACS is in beta (response to 1)

Posted by Bart Teeuwisse on 04/19/02 06:19 PM

Simon, the prices for Authorize.net vary with the reseller. You'll find the resellers in the reseller directory. The price structure of Authorize.net is different from VeriSign in that it does not depend on the number of transactions/month.

To give you an idea of the cost, here is what I paid through Cutting Edge:

$195 setup fee
$10.00/month online host fee
2.15% discount rate for MasterCard & VISA transactions
$0.30 transaction fee

It pays to try various resellers as fees are negotiable, especially the recurring fees.