integrate with Skrill (was Moneybookers)

[chadwhitacre]

https://www.skrill.com/app/

Reticketed from #65 (@chmike).

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[davidovitch]

I spent some time researching their website, here are my findings:

They seem to offer a lot of different services and it is, in my opinion, to difficult to get a clear overview. In general, I don't like it when there is no clear and transparent overview page...

Customers can pay via online bank transfer, credit or debit cards. Which payment options are available depends on the customers location. Overview of which is available here:
https://www.moneybookers.com/ads/merchant-account/payment-options/
And the fees, for the EU merchants:
https://www.moneybookers.com/ads/merchant-account/fees/
2.90% + €0.25 (EU)
and the US:
https://www.moneybookers.com/ads/merchant-account/us/fees/
2.40% + $0.29 (US)
Compare to Balanced: 2.90% + $0.30

What is not entirely clear to me is if these rates are independent of the payment method (card, bank transfer) or not.

And they seem to have a series of useful products within the context of Gittip:

• Recurring billing: Where a subscription or monthly payment is required implement recurring billing models to suit your needs (https://www.moneybookers.com/ads/merchant-account/direct-payment-processing/)
• Send and receive money world wide, but it seems US is not part of world wide due to legal issues (whatever that means) (https://www.moneybookers.com/send-money/)
• Send and receive money: maximum of 0.5€ per transaction if bank transfer is chosen, credit card to bank is possible, but adds another credit card processing fee. In theory you could bring down transaction costs if users payout in advance a certain amount into their gittip account. However, the Gittip user has to manually transfer the money to Gittip, but at least you have the option as a user. It says personal use, does it allow a person transferring money to a merchant on his/her own initiative?

In Europe, on-line payments are often done via the customers local bank:
https://www.moneybookers.com/ads/online-bank-transfer/en/
The advantage is that you use the local bank website and security measures for the transaction. With respect to fraud, my gut feeling says it is several orders of magnitude less sensitive compared to credit cards.

Skrill merchant services:
https://www.moneybookers.com/app/help.pl?s=m_info

How to implement, from the gateway manual (https://moneybookers.com/merchant/en/moneybookers_gateway_manual.pdf):

The Skrill Payment Gateway requires the Merchant to modify their payment page to include moneybookers.com as a payment option. Then, when the customer selects moneybookers.com as a payment method he is actually submitting an HTML form to Skrill secure web servers. The submitted form contains information about the payment, such as the Merchant's account, amount to be paid and several other hidden text fields.

That doesn't sound like an attractive and well thought through API? But I have zero experience with this, difficult for me to judge the merits of this approach.

To summarize:

• moving money out Gittip with money transfer: strong focus on the EU, the world, but excluding the US? Seems to require manual transactions.
• money out Gittip via cashback/loyalty mechanisms? No idea if that could be used within the withdraw from Gittip context, but at least they mention such procedures are available.
• payments options world wide, competitive rates, includes direct bank transfer for many Europeans
• lower transaction fees by allowing the user transfer manually money into gittip
• recurring billing
• doesn't offer a convenient API?
• I have the impression they do not demand exclusivity as a payment provider

[chadwhitacre]

Wow, thank you! Are you the right person to contact Skrill sales to talk further about this? If there's no API I'm not sure how to proceed, though ...

[davidovitch]

And thank you for creating something like Gittip :-) I wouldn't mind contacting Skrill sales, but before I do that I need to dig in a bit further on how payments are integrated into Gittip, so I can properly assess their apparent lack of an API. Could you give me any pointers? Just to make sure not to create any false hopes: before I get around this some weeks may pass by unnoticed...but I'll for sure keep you updated if something happens.

What I am assuming is that it (API) isn't exactly necessary since all the payment stuff is handled on their end.? Question is then, how do you know as a merchant which user succeeded to pay what amount. But that should be possible, what would otherwise Skrill's value for a merchant be?

[chadwhitacre]

This has stalled. Pruning.

[chadwhitacre]

Reopening per naspeh/mailur#4.

[chadwhitacre]

Heh. Thanks, @rohitpaulk. :-)

[nobodxbodon]

Re-ticketed to support more means of payin and payout for further discussion and planning. After deciding on concrete implementation plan and dev work starts, this will be reopened for tracking purpose.