Hi,

    Please let me know if any knows how to get the API, install and implement the online credit card processing in test environment. Does any one like Paypal or Linkpoint provides test environment and API to download and test. I have to implement the Online CC Processing for which i want to first make a sample application and test that before proceeding to buy the account with any vendor. please help me and explain me step by step.

 Thanks

Paypal provides an awesome test environment

I just did a project using paypal as a payment gateway and I was really impressed. They have an entire sandbox that you can use that lets you do pretty much everything and anything you would need to for testing.

https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/

You can setup fake accounts with e-mail addresses so you can easily inspect all the e-mails it sends out
and setup fake credit cards and funds

it's stellar

I've done this using paypal, linkpoint and authorizenet. All 3 of them give you a way to run test transactions without having to use a real credit card. I think paypal is probably the simplest to use. However, you should also consider what each of them charges. In the long run, I would let that determine which one you use. Because one of them might charge 20 cents a transaction plus %1 of the transaction amount and another might charge 30 cents and %2...so over time that can really ad up.

You can also look at google checkout. I haven't implemented their service but i did look into it. On the plus side, i believe all transactions using google checkout are free until the end of this year.

Of them all, i liked linkpoint the least (just based on technical merits). They were still good enough to use, i just found their documentation to be a little hard to use.

I'm also not too crazy about paypal since they have on occasion frozen accounts with no warning, and typically once they decide an account is canceled, you have no re-course and you have to wait 6 months to get whatever money was in the account. I personally had one account get canceled and it was virtually impossible to get any information from them. They gave me different reasons for the cancellation and eventually told me it was due to transactions there were placed years ago but aside from rough dates, could not give me transaction amounts or payee's etc etc. So i'm pretty wary of using them since you can be completely at their mercy if they decide to cancel your account for some reason.

However, based on the technical aspects of paypal, they are pretty easy to use, have good documentation and have several choices in how to process transactions.

The other thing to consider is that you don't really buy an account. With authorize.net and linkpoint i believe you already need to have a merchant account (basically commercial bank account) and they deposit your funds into that. With google checkout you can use a regular checking account, and with paypal you can also use a regular checking account.

Hope that helps

Can you please tell me know how to download the API from paypal, because i could not find the required API for vb.net.

 go to paypal and click on merchant services. You'll find all their documentation in there.

or try this: https://www.paypalobjects.com/WEBSCR-485-20070928-1/en_US/pdf/PP_WebsitePaymentsStandard_IntegrationGuide.pdf

 

Just google around, and I guarantee you'll find something someone has already done. You can even look inside some of the open source ASP.NET projects to find these implementations.

For example, http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/UsePayPalPaymentInASPNET.asp

My client is asking me to implement the CC Processing with BOA. But before that i want to build a sample application with paypal, so that i can go for live, but for that i need the API to work with, could you please tell me where can i get the API to download and start working.

 the link that i gave you earlier or that doyleits gave you both show examples on how to implement payments through paypal. You basically just create a bunch of form fields that you pass to paypal, and then paypal submits the results of the transaction back to your server and you parse the results and act accordingly if the transaction was successful.

But, for that i think i need the API right, or else is it that i just need to pass my parameters to his site and he will send me the result, if so what is the URL where i need to send my values to process the CC. Sorry for troubling you, but i know nothing about this and i really need spoon feeding.

 No API...it's done with html. You basically create a page which submits a form with certain fields to the paypal server. The paypal server processes this and then it submits the results of the transaction back to your server and you can act on the results accordingly. This all happens in real time within a few seconds so you can tell the person submitting their payment info right away if the payment was successful or not.

if you look at the link i provided to paypal, that's all their documentation on it. It'll tell you what fields you have to supply, where to submit it etc.