How Do I Get the Remaining Transaction Refund Balance with Authorize.Net? - e-commerce

With Authorize.Net, I see no way to use the Transaction Details (TD) API in order to find the remaining transaction refund balance, such as someone who buys two products at once on a given transaction, gets refunded on one product, and then the next day comes back and wants to get refunded on the second product. Unless I store those prices somewhere, I have no way to know how much to refund. And this gets more complicated when exchange rates are used, where the price fluctuates a little. The only way to refund properly on the second product is to get the remaining refund balance and refund that balance.
What's the trick to get the remaining balance that I can still refund out of the transaction?

Unfortunately there is no way to get that information through their API. The merchant account provider does not provide this information nor does Authnet keep track of this information themselves. Basically you need to keep track of open balances, available refunds, etc on your end.

Related

Paypal API and automated refunds

I would like to inquire about this:
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/express-checkout/ht_basicRefund-curl-etc/
How to initiate an automated refund based on a product ordered that is out of stock.
Example:
Customer A goes to our website and orders product A. Product A is unfortunately out of stock but we did not notice it right away(restaurant). Instead of refunding people manually, can this API refund the person automatically based on a call back from our website.
Also when a refund is given, is there a charge?(Charge back), if yes, where can I find out about the cost per charge back.
Finally, how long does it take for the refund money to reach the customer's account if the refund is initiated let's say 5 minutes after the sale.
Thank you,
Regards,
Ben
ps: I am posting the query here as I was sent to this website from the Paypal support page.
You could do this using the RefundTransaction API from within an IPN script.
A general refund is not considered a chargeback. That only happens if you refuse to provide a refund for your buyer, so then they end up filing a dispute with their credit card company. The card company would then give them the money and take it from PayPal, who would then come back to you for it. That's when you would have to pay a fee for that chargeback. If I remember correctly that fee would be $25 for such a scenario.
So the refunds wouldn't be a chargeback, but you would lose the 30 cent transaction fee you pay when you do the original transaction. PayPal refunds you the percentage they take, but not the flat 30 cents.
Also, if this is something happens a lot PayPal may limit your account or it could cause you other little problems. Lots of refunds could mean upset customers, and PayPal doesn't want that...and neither should you.
So, all of that said, what I would recommend is that you handle the inventory control before the purchase is made. You're saying you could hit your database to check inventory and then automatically refund, right? Why not hit your database to simply disable the product purchase if the inventory is low instead?

Aggregation API: Yodlee transactions resulting when a check bounces

How do people deal with the situation of bounced checks when getting Yodlee transactions through the Aggregation API?
Our app only retrieves posted transactions and it has led to an issue.
Most banks seem to balance the bounced check situation by providing posted transactions for both the initial check disbursement (negative amount) and for the bounced check (positive amount). Bank of America, however only posts the positive amount transaction - (the one the increases the balance of the consumer's bank account) - the original transaction never gets past the pending stage. and since the original transaction (the check) is never posted it results in an incorrect increase in balance on the consumer side.
Any thoughts?
If you are customer of Yodlee, then you can reach out to Yodlee's support team and raise your issue with details like BankName, SiteId,memSiteAccId and cobrandId. Yodlee's data team will look into it and would be able to help you out.

Save and Verify the Card, Charge Later - Shopify

I'm setting up my first Shopify store and would like to offer a free trial of a product. The basic idea is the customer is shipped the product at no charge and has so many days to try out and return the product. If the product is not returned within the time period they are charged the amount agreed upon up front.
Within Shopify there is only the option to capture payment immediately or to authorize and then manually capture payment later (7 day auth limitation).
What I would like to do is validate the credit card, but not pre-auth, then the ship the product to the customer for try out. If they decide to keep the product then I charge them 30 days later as agreed by the customer.
The method I want to use with Shopify is the same as detailed by Braintree here
https://support.braintreepayments.com/customer/portal/articles/1080637-collect-payment-at-a-later-date-aka-extend-authorization-
in the section "Save and Verify the Card, Charge Later".
You can use the option as you see it: authorize and then manually capture payment later
As an alternative, you could always capture the money, and if they actually do return it, refund them the money. That is how all TV sales work and they make bazillions doing that, so why not follow their lead?

Current PayPal Fees in web API?

Does anyone know if there is a publicly available PayPal resource that would allow me to calculate transaction fees in my Magento code?
For example, if someone buys something for $1.00, I'd like to know if $0.15 of that is a PayPal fee.
If there were a resource, like paypal.com/currentfees.xml or something that I could readout in my PHP code, I could that. Does it exist? I know there are different fees for different payment methods (e.g., AMEX) and fees could change at any time -> So it'd be good to have a dynamic way to calculate how much of Magento's order totals are really PayPal fees.
EDIT: To clarify, I'm not interested in charging customers more, just in knowing how much of my price is going to fees. For bookkeeping.
Thanks!
PayPal fees are not the same across accounts or even by transaction; there are different fees for cross-border transactions, PayPal Here transactions, large-merchant discounts, et cetera.
Have a look at https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees for more detail.
So no, unfortunately you can't pull a resource to find the current fee.
However, PayPal does return the fees paid for each transaction in the API response.
For example, if you're integrated with PayPal Express Checkout, the DoExpressCheckoutPayment API (doc) is used to finalize a transaction. This API call returns a 'PAYMENTINFO_0_FEEAMT' parameter which contains the total fee amount paid for the transaction.
Should you wish to retrieve this information after the transaction has been completed; PayPal also offers the GetTransactionDetails API call (doc). This API call also returns 'FEEAMT' as a parameter.
Simply submit the TRANSACTIONID and read out the FEEAMT.
Note: Fees are only calculated on completed transactions. You won't get a FEEAMT back for any order or authorization-ID's (e.g. those starting with O-xxxxxxxx).

Parallel credit card payments (akin to Paypal Adaptive payments)

I'm not sure this is the right place to ask but anyway:
I have an e-commerce platform that I want to monetize based on a percentage of revenue made (eg. a store that uses my platform has an order for $100, so I get 1% or $1, while they get $99).
Currently I offer paypal and credit card payments (via my merchant bank) to all stores on the platform (ie. all payments made, regardless of the store, are through the same paypal and merchant account). I then pay these stores per month which is ok for the moment because there are only a few stores using the platform.
Moving forward I want to automate this process and ideally have it operate in real time.
Paypal have an "Adaptive Payments" API that allows chained or parallel payments on a single transaction processed in real time. This means I can skim my 1% and pass the rest of the money along my customer in real time.
I was wondering if there is a similar real-time service for Credit Card processing*? If not, is there a bank/merchant that allow API payment access so I can automate payments per day or week? OR should I just transfer all money from my bank to paypal and use this to pay my customers?
*I realise you can process credit card payments through Paypal without having to sign up, but this is less than ideal. I want the credit card processing to happen on my page as at the moment I'm seeing about 70% of orders using this over paypal.
I was wondering if there is a similar real-time service for Credit Card processing?
No there isn't. True merchant accounts do not allow for split payments. Only one entity can receive a payment and it must be the business the merchant account has been set up for. Receiving the payment for someone else is called factoring and is against all of the major credit card issuers' rules. If a merchant account is found to be factoring it will be closed and the merchant who owns the account will be blacklist. This will prevent them from ever having a true merchant account again. Additionally, there is no way to send money with a merchant account other then issuing a refund for prior purchases.
If not, is there a bank/merchant that allow API payment access so I can automate payments per day or week? OR should I just transfer all money from my bank to paypal and use this to pay my customers?
Other then using adaptive payments, this is definitely the easiest and most straight forward way to accomplish this.