New order form using PayPal for processing

[John Raabe]

We are moving away from having our own merchant account to using PayPal to process our plan orders. See the order form here: http://countryplans.com/order.html.

This gives us cutting edge security (we never see the credit card information) and it gives you the customer a wider level of choices as to how to pay. Note that a PayPal account isn't needed, but if PayPal finds an account match to your email address then it gives you that as your initial option.

We have always run the CountryPlans orders manually and we enjoy the hands on aspect of a real person looking at your order and answering any questions. That will continue with the new system. After we have logged your order and made sure it makes sense, then we send a payment request on to Paypal with nothing more than the order amount and your email address. They send you a link using PayPal's secure servers. You can pay using any card or a check (which no one has tried yet).

Please let me know if there is any confusion or glitches using this new system. We want to keep this clean and simple but super safe for your card and personal information. If you have ideas for improvements I'd appreciate hearing them.

John Raabe
orders@countryplans.com

[duncanshannon]

good move! paypal is great - very easy!

[John Raabe]

I haven't yet gotten it as smooth as I want. Right now it is a two step process. I'm working on designing a new order page with PayPal Buy Now buttons that will eliminate the step where we send a payment request. That will also speed up the whole process.

Stay tuned...

[John Raabe]

Well, PayPal is still a two step process (request payment, customer goes to PayPal to pay, PayPal informs me and I process and send the order) - I guess that is really a four step process but for the customer it is two steps.

At any rate.... I have added back in our merchant account card processing so that one step order process will work the same way it always has.