Quick question... Just signed up with Authorize.net to offer an alternative to PayPal, and they offer an ARB option (automated recurring billing) for another 10 bucks a month. Currently I'm doing subscriptions through PayPal - user signs up for initial subscription, then each month gets charged for the additional content delivered. In order to do this with Auth.net, do I need this ARB option?
I'm still a beginner, but have a fair enough understanding of auth.net. No, you don't need ARB. The 2 options you have are: Auth.net AIM and Auth.net CIM (requires additional auth.net fee to get) The difference being security. With the Auth.net AIM, you would be storing the credit card information on your server, and a cron job would re-charge that account everything for the recurring portion. With the CIM package, all the CC info is stored on the auth.net servers and they qualify for all the PCI security requirements. The only thing that is stored on your server is a CIM ID and Billing Profile ID. Then the recurring piece uses those ID and sends the appropriate message to auth.net server to charge the CIM account based on the CIM ID (and since auth.net saves the CC info, they know what CC to charge). These are better options I believe than the ARB - I tried that approach before moving to amember and it was a pain to try to keep the subscriptions in synch with each other. I had subscription information on my server, and auth.net had subscription info on its server, and so you had to maintain both places. I currently am going to launch with the amember/Auth.net CIM package to avoid the security risks associated with storing the CC info on my servers.
danf, Did this work for you? i see there is a warning for the Authorize.Net CIM plugin --------------------------------------------------- ! IMPORTANT! This plugin is BETA. Do not use it in ! ! production enviroment. --------------------------------------------------- And I wonder if that is a concern or if CIM is operational. Thanks
@brechtp - it appears to be working, but we just went live with it, so we only done alittle testing to see if it will charge the recurring billing portion. But as far as I can tell it works. I asked amember about the same thing and they said others are using it in production environments, so that it should be ok - but they wanted to give it more time before removing the beta label.
@danf - thanks. I set this up yesterday and made a successful charge with it. But I also have not tested recurring billing. If anyone can confirm their experience with recurring payments that would be great.