As mentioned, PayPal offers multiple payment methods. In the following steps we will go through how to get their most-used method available:
After clicking on this button, you will be taken to the first step of the account creation wizard. Click on the Get Started button in the PayPal for business and nonprofits block and go through the form:
A PayPal account looks like the following screenshot:
Besides the general payment configuration options Title and Sort Order, which are explained at the start of this chapter, another (not required) setting that can be found in the PayPal form is Payment Action: this is set to Sale by default, but can also be set to Authorization. Setting it to Authorization means that you will not receive money after the customer finishes his/her order, but instead you as the store owner will have to complete the transaction at a later time by performing a "capture" of the payment (either through PayPal's system or through invoicing in the Magento admin). We recommend that you leave this set to Sale unless you have a good reason for a deferred payment through the Authorization option.
Clicking on the Advanced Settings orange link displays some final setup options, all of which you are advised to leave to the default settings:
In the following screenshot you can see what the basic and advanced settings for PayPal Payments Standard look like:
Remember to save the config after setting everything to the desired values. As a rule, it's best to save as soon as you're done with a certain section. After setting up PayPal, it will look like the following screenshot in your checkout:
Q1. What is the minimum amount of information needed to input into Magento in order to accept PayPal Payments Standard? Choose the right answer from the following options:
Saved credit card (saved CC) is Magento's way of allowing you to capture credit card payments out of the box. It should be noted that this payment method is not a particularly good way of offering credit card payments on your website. In fact, we advise you to look for other options if possible. The main drawbacks of the saved CC payment method in Magento are as follows:
A more usual way of accepting credit cards is by working with a payment service provider (PSP). Payment service providers will be discussed in more detail toward the end of this chapter. Authorize.net is a payment service provider integrated by default into Magento, which can be used to accept credit cards without having the issues previously outlined. The payment service provider will receive the money and transfer it to you automatically, and the customer's sensitive credit card data is handled and saved by the payment service provider as well.
A quick solution for shops that cannot arrange credit card payments through a payment service provider is naming the PayPal Standard payment option along the lines of "PayPal and credit card through PayPal". This works because customers can pay using their credit card through PayPal Standard as well, although it isn't as quick or easy to use as a dedicated credit card payment method.
All that having been said, if you want to go ahead with saved CC payments, these are the specific configuration options:
Enabling this payment method and saving the configuration results in the following payment method display in the checkout:
The check / money order payment method has two configuration inputs:
These are displayed in the following screenshot. Other than capturing the customer's order, Magento will not automatically arrange anything relating to the payment of the check / money order:
Setting this payment method results in the following display in your store's checkout process:
As an exercise in enabling a simple payment method, enable the check / money order payment method. It may be already enabled in your store if you have a completely default installation. Set it up so that it is only shown to U.S. customers through the Payment from Applicable Countries input field. After you are done, verify that it's done correctly by purchasing two products in two separate checkouts in your test store: one with the country selected as U.S. and one with the country as Belgium. In the latter checkout, you should not see the check / money order payment method, of course!
There is only one specific field to configure for the bank transfer payment method, and that's called Instructions. In this field, you should enter all relevant bank account details that your customer needs to transfer money to you.
Setting the bank transfer to active results in the following payment display:
After setting up the bank transfer settings, when you check out it is shown as follows:
This payment method also has only one specific setting called Instruction . Here you should list any information related to the cash on delivery payment, for instance, how your customer can pay (cash, debit card, credit card, and so on) when the goods are delivered. Often the delivery company charges extra for performing a cash on delivery shipment, and because of that often store owners charge customers extra for the cash on delivery shipment option as well. Unfortunately, a surcharge for cash on delivery is not possible through the default cash on delivery payment option in Magento, but there is a free module on MagentoConnect that does offer this. It's located at http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/cashondelivery.html.
Activating cash on delivery results in a payment selection as follows in the checkout:
There are no specific input fields in the admin for purchase orders, just the general payment configuration fields that were discussed at the start of this section. This also implies that Magento will just save the order information when a customer chooses Purchase Order as their payment method; any additional actions will need to be performed by the store owner. Activating the purchase order payment method results in the screen shown, where it can be seen that the customer can input their purchase order number:
From the preceding screenshot it should be clear that most of the payment methods that are offered by Magento out of the box require manual processing to receive an actual payment and safely fulfill the order. The exceptions are the payment gateways PayPal Payflow Pro and Authorize.net, and the PayPal Payments Standard payment method. For stores that process multiple orders daily, the manual payment methods offered by Magento become cumbersome quickly.