Repeated charging with Payflow Pro

Question

This is probably more question for technical support of Payflow Pro, but anyway. We are trying to implement repeated charging of one credit card by Payflow Pro payment with ActiveMerchant. We need the customer to give the credit card info once and then be charged every month for variable amounts. However, there does not seem to be any explicit STORE method in the Payflow API even though it has to be somehow possible as the RECURRING billing is part of the standard. Are we missing something and there are methods for that or we have to use some workaround?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 11 '11 at 12:46

Ok, figured it out myself in the end, just FYI: this has nothing to do with the recurring payments. You can simply "STORE" credit card by issuing and voiding some small amount transaction and then later, instead of puting credit card details, you put the returned request.token (or 'pn_ref' in payflow terms).

Something like this should work

module ActiveMerchant #:nodoc:
  module Billing #:nodoc:
     class PayflowGateway

       def store(credit_card, options = {})
         stored = purchase( 1, credit_card)
         return stored unless stored.success?

         # we may charge some money we should not but I guess there is
         # no better way for now
         voided = void(stored.authorization)
         return voided unless voided.success?

        return stored
      end

    end
  end
end

sorry for so late here, Is there any limit to charge with pnref, i noticed that transaction greater than $1000 gives error with pnref based payment request, please suggest. — Rizwan Yahya, Oct 24 '12 at 07:13

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 06 '11 at 17:53

Yes, that's the way I solved this problem too. PNRefs are quite handy for implementing your own recurring billing system... However, you'll be charged for $1 authorization-and-void amounts as well, I think, because VISA and others started to crack down on the use of those as account verifications. They're now recommending that you use ZDA (zero-dollar amount) authorizations, which return error code 0 and the response message 'Verified' instead of 'Authorized'. This works with all merchant banks -- unless PayPal is your merchant bank, in which case you'll get an error code 4 - 'Invalid Amount'. If PayPal is your merchant bank, they just recommend doing the $1 authorization-and-void, and apparently they shoulder the VISA fees.

Here's a good article on the fees and recommended practices for doing zero-dollar authorizations: https://www.x.com/docs/DOC-1561

Repeated charging with Payflow Pro

2 Answers2