Hello, We have some misunderstandings here.
2008/8/4 Paul Boddie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hello, > > Having read some of the discussion on payment providers, which has been > something of an issue for EuroPython for the past two years (at least, but > with more urgency this year and last), and noting that PyCon US isn't > experiencing much better, perhaps we should seize the opportunity and set > down what we want, what we don't want, and what we can live with. > > Here are a few things which I think have come out of the discussion so far: > > Reliability - PayPal seems pretty awful with respect to reliability and > actually recovering from errors, and perhaps something > better that handles credit/debit card payments might be > worth investing in No, PayPal has been very reliable. I expected not to like it, but it works _very_ well. My problems with it have been when it restricts the account when you reach certain thresholds, and requires you to go through an identification process. This is because of European anti-money laundering regulations, so is quite understandable, although I have asked PayPal to smooth the process. Now we are through the various thresholds (for EuroPython and PyCon UK), we should not have the problem again. The problems we had with EP2009 were with the old Soviet-bloc countries, where PayPal and almost any credit card seem to be a problem. I suspect that we would get this whatever system we used. I did establish at one point that users were getting different screens from PayPal according to the country they were in. At some time I'll follow this up with PayPal. Payments from the US, UK, Germany, France etc are completely straightforward and reliable. > Integration - having the ability to find out who paid is obviously > important, along with knowing whose payments haven't worked > for whatever reason; I remember looking into some payment > provider API back in the days of Indico and getting their > payment modules working with an account that I think had > expired, but simplicity and security are the key factors > here; to be able to conveniently reconcile registrations > with payments would reduce the organisers' workload The shopping cart is quite good at managing the payments, the issue was with integarting this into a conferencing system which is now fairly well-developed. > Convenience - for the end-user, I think John's solution is pretty good in > that the payment interface is handled for us, and it's not > like the Reval payment system where you get bounced off to > an iframe served out of Estonia ;-) (but we still rely on > PayPal, currently) The whole point of it was to make it convenient for the user, to boost bookings. > Versatility - being able to deal with major cards, and PayPal for those > who absolutely must use it, is essential, whereas bank > transfers are most likely to get reconciled by other means, > I imagine; handling the EuroPython "absence of VAT" > requirements is a necessity The shopping cart gives us this. > Maintenance - if such things are going to cost money, and need to be active > (because financial institutions love to declare things > dormant and ask for more money to "reactivate" them), then > perhaps we need to consider an arrangement where more than > one conference can use the provider, although this may well > complicate the administrative arrangements I think we may be into legal problems here, with the different countries involved. For example, it looks like the PyCon UK Society may have to run EP2009 on behalf of the EuroPython Society, as providers want to have a contract with a UK organisation. > Does this (minus my opinions, of course) sum up the situation? The stuff about > a common provider arrangement is probably unfeasible, given the need to have > money going into different accounts, having different legal entities of > different kinds in different countries, but then again, perhaps the PSF > should be aspiring to lowering the barrier to entry for Python conference > organisers. I think it sums it up well, except that PayPal is actually pretty good. Paying the extra for a PayPal Pro account might solve some of the 'strange' credit card problems: we'll see. Best wishes, John -- _______________________________________________ Europython-improve mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython-improve
