Hi there,

I'm currently working on an auction website. When it comes to billing users I could simply send them an invoice and have them pay using PayPal, 2checkout, worldpay,etc.

The only thing is that by doing this way or I might be wrong, is pretty much up to the users whether they want to pay the fees or not. I can always ban the user if he, she doesn't pay but I might be a hassle and I might loose business as well.

So my question is that how can I force users to pay fees? Will I need to create a database with their credit card info and that way I can just take the fees directly from their card? ( i.e. ebay) will I need a merchant account for this?

Any ideas on how to bill users and take their payments directly from their credit card or bank account?


Thanks?

Why not have them pay fees up front like qxl.com, much easier and will bring in a steady stream of money, also customers won't get over the top bills at the end of the month like other auction sites

Say for example they want to do a listing take there 10p fee up front then allow them to list their item, not sure on how to do it but someone on here will know.

thanks for that. I can actually do that, bill them before they list the auction but I will still have to bill them at the end for a percentage of the winning total

instead of a percentage of the final fee you could have a monthly subscription fee which will automatically be taken out of their accounts. I can't think of another site that does this for auctions. It could encourage more customers though not having to pay final fees.

Another alternative would be to get them to pre-pay. They credit their account with whatever amount they choose and you store that amount in the database rather than their card details. You then adjust the amount each time they are charged for something.

Depending on the market it could put some people off, but it would greatly reduce both your operating costs (in terms of processing fees) and in administration.