Donate buttons for non-profits, credit card on payment requests and a slick new home page
October 18, 2011 9 Comments
Dear users,
Thanks for providing feedback on the recent features we launched. Based on what you told us, we now have the following enhancements in IPN:
- Donate buttons
This is particularly useful if you are a non-profit and want to get paid for only 50 cents a payment from your web site. You can create blue and orange ‘Donate’ buttons when you add a new button from your ‘ECommerce Buttons’ menu on the left in IPN.
- Credit card payments on payment requests
We are extending credit card capabilities beyond QuickBooks invoices. Now as a small business when you turn CC capabilities ‘ON’ from your ‘Profile’ menu on the left in IPN, your customers can pay you using CC when they do an email payment from IPN or when then click the pay button on your payment request.
- Invoice/Reference # field in ‘Send Payment’ and ‘Request Payment’ flows
You can now track your payments or payment requests with a reference #. This reference # can be an account #, invoice # or any other identifier that you want to use.
- Memo field in ‘Custom Pay Link’
When customers pay from a customized pay link they can now enter a message. Some examples of messages could be ‘Payment for bolts delivered’, ‘Payment for account # 21269′, etc
- Emails on scheduled payments
You will now receive an email notification when a customer schedules a payment for a future date letting you know when the payment is scheduled for.
- New IPN home page
Slicker , cleaner home page that focuses on the key benefit to users (50 c payments) and other value added features (eCommerce payments, QB integration, etc)
As always…. please continue to provide feedback on what you like about the existing features of IPN and what enhancements you would like us to build to better serve your needs.
Thanks,
The IPN team
You process a payment on 10/15 for <$5000. Why is there still a hold at 10/19? You seem to do excessive holds repeatedly IPN!
Ted,
Thanks a lot for providing feedback. Our apologies for the delay in payments. Please feel free to email at paymentnetwork@intuit.com or post on this blog with further comments and feedback.
We hope that your experience with PaymentNetwork is now improved.
- Chetan Sukthanker
Hi. Do you have any Facebook page integration tools for IPN?
Theron,
You can create a ‘Custom Pay Link’ and post that link on your Facebook small business page to get paid. Here is an example of how some small businesses are using Facebook to get paid by IPN: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Great-Lakes-Academy/145389178808958
- Chetan Sukthanker
Curious as to the costs associated with processing cc’s. Any info?
Mike,
Thanks for your feedback.
Find below some details on CC transactions in IPN. Note bank payments continue to be at 50 cents/payment.
Fees:
1) No monthly fee, monthly minimum or set up fee
2) No cancellation or termination fees
3) No per transaction authorization fees
4) Flat fee of 3.25% per transaction that does not change based on transaction type (qualified, non-qualified)
5) No complicated statements or bills at the end of month to figure out what are the transaction fees
Features:
1) Net settlement Vs. complicated bill/statement at end of month
2) Ability for the small business to control CC transactions. There is an ‘ON/OFF’ switch to toggle between offering CC or not.
3) Ability to get paid on QB invoices using CC. (and very soon on ipn.intuit.com email payments flow)
Please email us comments/initial thoughts either on this post or at paymentnetwork@intuit.com
- Chetan Sukthanker
Your credit card processing fees are still quite a bit more than PayPal. $0-3,000:
2.9% + $0.30 on PayPay, but 3.25% via IPN. On a $150 transaction, that’s $4.65 via PayPal and $4.88 via IPN. Sure, it’s just 23 cents, but over many transactions, that’s a lot of money for essentially the same service. Even if IPN is a bit more convenient via QuickBooks (and I’m not sure it is, since I can’t get Sync to work), it’s not worth that much more, I think.
Andrew,
Apologies for the late reply to your comment. You are correct that based on the transaction amount and the type of payment (CC Vs ACH), either PayPal or IPN could be a more cost effective solution for the small business. However for ACH bank to bank payments IPN does currently charge only 50c/payment with no other cost.
From a reconciliation perspective we are actually providing a new way to record your payments for QuickBooks 2012 users. This new approach does not use SYNC manager and gets rid of many challenges that the existing reconciliation process has. This new approach will be launching in a couple of days and I will post the new screen shots here.
Feel free to email us at paymentnetwork@intuit.com or comment back with additional feedback and suggestions to improve IPN.
Thanks,
Chetan Sukthanker
While the cost of 50 cents to receive payments is more effective than PayPal, it does require the user to provide access to their accounts. I think most people would rather use a credit card and thus having lower credit card processing costs seems more important.
From the cost of using IPN to the cost of checks and supplies, Intuit constantly seems to make the error of believing they can charge more and maintain volume. Ironically, if Intuit lowered prices across the board to beat PayPal on cc processing fees and Costco on check printing costs, it would see its volume explode, which would more than make up for the price cuts.