Micropayments (website access)

[ Back to administration ]

Introduction

Besides payments for ringtones, logos, wallpapers and more, the payment system of Ringtonio can also handle paid access to parts of your site. Possible applications:

• A contest in which the visitors can compete for one of the prizes for € 1,30;
• An advertisement-system in which an other webmaster can get a link placed for € 1,30 or buy some advertisement-views for € 1,30;
• Charging the visitors for the making of an account on your portal;
• etc. etc. etc.

Commission

The revenues of the micropayment system can be found between the other statistics at Ringtonio.com, and will be underneath category III (just like the javagames). Of the consumer price of € 1,30 in The Netherlands we pay you € 1,- included VAT (€ 0,84 without VAT). See also our page with payments.

Protecting your content

It is not possible for other partners of Ringtonio to use your content. If someone uses the link to the payment form from your site, and place this on their site, we will book all of the commission from that site to your account.

Case: online advertisement

As the system for paid website access requires more knowledge of the webmaster, the system shall be illustrated on the basis of a case.
The payment system will be used in this application to charge the participants for advertisement-views. After the payment, the advertisement-views will be added to the account of the concerned participant.

To get this system running, there must be written 2 scripts to handle the payment. We will explain later on why this has to be so difficult:

• The call-back script
  We call on this script on your background, the visitor shall not notice this. We give this call-back script a unique pay code. You can see the call on of this script by our server as a sign that within a few minutes there will be a customer with pay code X, and it is paid.
  Our call-back script has to register pay code X in a file or database;
  
  
• The return URL
  After the payment, we refer the customer to the return URL, this URL has to be given with the link to the payment form, and can contain other parameters. In that link we will change {id} into the pay code.
  Our return URL must check in the file or database if the given pay code is already registered and paid, then the return URL increases the advertisement credits. Of course, this script has to know where the credits have to be added to. A possible call-back URL can be:http://www.trafficbeamer.nl/addcredits?betaalcode={id}&tbusername=pietjan

After finishing the 2 scripts, and the product is made in the administration of the micropayments, there can be made a link to the pay form:

<a href="#" onClick="send('200297&returnurl='+escape('http://www.trafficbeamer.nl/addcredits?betaalcode={id}&tbusername=pietjan')); return false;">Upgrade now, click here!</a>

If the visitor clicks on the link, there will appear a payment popup. The order proces seams to be the same as a paid download. Only the last page is different:



At the moment your customer sees this page, the Ringtonio script has already called on the call-back script with the affiliate code. At that moment your script had already registered that for example a customer is on his way with affiliate code 123456.
When the visitor clicks on the link ‘Click here to…’ he will be send to your site with the same pay code. You have to check that pay code in the earlier made file and then you need to delete this.

Why is it so difficult?

The answer is very simple: security. The difficulty of this system is to find out if your customer really paid. Because of our signs to you on the background that there is coming a customer with pay code X, you can easily see if your customer has paid.
Watch out for the following pitfall: Ringtonio also has a general call-back function, with which you can register how many you’ve sold. Please note, that we can use the call-back function in the micropayments system to activate affiliate codes. The Ringtonio team can do a random check by using the call-back function of the micropayments to access your site and to check if your site satisfies our directives (like no child pornography, warez or other illegal activities). It is possible that there will be a difference between the number of paid sales which are called on with the general call-back function and the number of hits on your call-back script of the micropayments.

Click here to get started with the micropayments-system...