[ic] Status of Paypal Intergration

[interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com (Andrew Lietzow)]

Mike Heins wrote...
>RE:>>Now that PayPal and like services are under attack from Mastercard
>and other financial institutions, it is even less likely a serious effort 
>will happen.

Mastercard is shooting themselves in the foot and they will feel some
pain shortly.  15,000,000 Paypal users cussing Mastercard under their
breath can't be a good marketing ploy.

RE:>>And no one wants to pay a consultant enough to implement such a module,
because the people with the resources to pay for it don't use PayPal.

I agree with you to a large extent, yet it is also true that if you don't 
have to, why
incur additional expenses?   I'd rather purchase more IC documentation, pay 
my DSL
bill so I can stay online, or whatever.  I was asking this question because 
I wanted to know
the status, in case progress had been made.  I would use the interface it 
if were
developed.  I dropped my Wells Fargo merchant account because 90% of my
business was going through Paypal.com.  I am only asking because I DO need a
solution and hoped others would comment re progress.

Here is what may be a rather efficient workaround, if one has QuickBooks as 
a backend
accounting system.  It will save you Interchange guru's development time 
AND make IC/
Paypal.com sellers happy as well.

Everyone that wants to pay by credit card can just as easily be billed with
QuickBooks.  Last time I checked, QB had a good working relationship with 
Paypal.com.
When a customer places an IC order and wants to pay by credit card, they 
can select PO
as a method of payment.  When the order comes in, QB allows me to email the 
customer
the invoice and embed a link back to Paypal.com in order to help them make 
payment
in the correct amount.  This is one extra step, but it's an automated one.

This also gives us an opportunity to review the order for accuracy in the 
shipping costs,
and inform the customer of availability PRIOR to them making a 
payment.  Should save
a lot of hassle in issuing credit memos AND it will allow them to use a CC 
through Paypal ...
as long as it's not a Mastercard.  :-)? And my G/L is up to date and the 
tax man likes that!

Win-win-win-win.   This seems to be a desirable alternative IF it will 
work... Now on to test
the theory...  And, thanks for letting me/us know the status!

Andrew Lietzow, MBA
A new member of the GNU generation
The ACL Group, Inc.