Posts Tagged ‘paypal’
How to Build a PayPal Subscription Form
Many websites allow visitors to access online content and services for a monthly subscription fee. Creating a subscription form is somewhat different from creating a regular payment form, because it involves setting up a recurring payment, so that the buyer is automatically billed a fixed amount of money at a fixed interval until the subscription is canceled. The online form builder’s payment integration feature now supports PayPal Subscriptions.
Creating a Subscription Form
Creating a subscription form is quick and easy:
- If you haven’t got a FormSmarts account yet, sign up for a FormSmarts Business account, then create a form with the form generator
- In the Form Details screen of the form generator, set the On Submission option to Integrate with PayPal
- Add radio buttons, a drop-down list or a checkbox, and enter the description, price and duration of subscription options formatted as My Subscription ($19.99 USD/month), as shown on the screenshot above and in this demo.
Duration of a Subscription
The time before another payment is due can be specified in days, weeks, months, or years. The form builder understands the following formatting variations:
- Monthly Subscription ($9.99 USD/Month)
- 30-Day Subscription ($9.99 USD/30 days)
Trial Subscription
Like in the example presented in the first section, you may specify a trial period for the subscription. This is typically used to give a free trial subscription to the buyer before he is charged for the first billing cycle. The buyer will not have to pay anything if he cancels the subscription before the end of the trial period.
- The trial period doesn’t need to be free
- You may specify up to two trial periods
- Any trial periods must be placed on the form after the main subscription specification.
Payment in Installments
A payment in installments is a recurring payment where the number of payments is fixed.
FormSmarts supports installments with the following syntax:
- Payment in 12 Installments (12x$9.99 USD/month)
- Try this demo
Any Feedback?
As always, your feedback is important to us and is our primary source of inspiration for developing new features. You can also post your questions and comments on Facebook and Twitter (@FormSmarts).
Posted on Jan 17th, 2011 in payment form.
1 Comment
Tags: form builder, payment integration, paypal, paypal form
Changes in Form Builder Payment Integration
The recent upgrade introduces some changes in FormSmarts Payment Integration (PayPal Form) feature.
- Chargeable items may now be placed in check boxes. This should prove valuable in situations where you’re building a form with one or several optional, individually priced items.
- Payment button instead of link. We’ve replaced the payment link on the confirmation page by a more outstanding button.
- Form ID now shown in PayPal report. Up to now, when you needed to reconcile a payment with the corresponding form submission, you could only rely on the FormSmarts Reference Number. This is the unique ID shown in the subject of emails containing form data and in Form to Excel reports. The same ID appears in the payment details in your Paypal account, and also in the CSV report you can generate. We’ve now added the Form ID (see screenshot) to the information available on PayPal, so you may quickly identify which form each payment is for.
We warmly welcome your feedback.
Posted on May 5th, 2010 in form builder.
4 Comments
Tags: payment integration, paypal, paypal form
How to Make a PayPal Form
FormSmarts PayPal Integration is your best option when you need to collect data and get a payment on a form. It makes it very easy to receive PayPal payments on your forms, while giving you the power, flexibility and ease of use of a full-featured online form builder.
For example, you can easily build:
- an event registration form
- a membership form with recurring fees
- a booking form (booking form demo)
- an online order form (order form demo)
- a subscription form with recurring payments (PayPal subscription demo)
- a PayPal donation form or recurring donation form
- and any other online forms with which you want to collect fees with PayPal
Note: The demos above are hosted on FormSmarts, but you can also embed a form on your own website with the code snippet given by the form builder.
How to Create a PayPal Form in 3 Minutes: Video Tutorial
Receive Payments on a Form
To allow people to pay on a form:
- Sign up for a FormSmarts Business account and create a form with the form builder
- Add radio buttons, a drop-down list or a checkbox, and enter the description and fees (or item price) formatted as
Item Description ($30 USD)
, as shown on the screenshot below. - To complete PayPal integration, add your Notification URL to your PayPal account.
It’s as simple as that. We’ll pick up the items, fees or amounts and quantities that are selected on the form, and we’ll redirect the user to a pre-filled page on PayPal where they can enter their credit card info or sign in to pay with their PayPal account.
Payments are sent to the PayPal account matching your FormSmarts login email. Make sure the email address you use for PayPal and FormSmarts are the same. You can change your FormSmarts login if needed.
Charge for Multiple Items on a Form
You can as easily charge for several items on a form by adding more drop-down lists or radio buttons formatted as just described.
Add a Quantity to a Fee or Priced Item
There are several ways to let your customers choose a quantity for a fee or priced item, for example the number of tickets or guests on an event registration form.
The simplest way is to combine the ticket price or fee and a quantity selector into a single drop-down, as illustrated below:
If you want to allow your customers to buy an open-ended number of items, use a quantity box instead.
Build a Subscription Form with Recurring Payment
A membership or subscription involves paying a recurring amount each billing cycle until the subscription ends or is canceled. This article covers how to create a subscription form in detail.
In most cases, you just need to add the recurring fee to a form as Monthly Subscription ($19.99 USD/month)
You can also use a recurring payment to allow your customers to pay in installments. A payment in installments is a recurring payment where the number of payments is fixed.
The syntax is Payment in 12 Installments (12x$9.99 USD/month)
, as show in this demo.
Create a Donation Form
FormSmarts Payment Integration also supports PayPal Donations and recurring donations.
To create a contribution form:
- Add a Text Box to your form with the field name formatted as
My Donation ($ USD)
- Set the field’s allowed content to Positive Number
You can add multiple donation boxes to a form to allow contributions towards multiple projects or causes on the same form like on this demo.
Offer a Discount on a PayPal Form
FormSmarts allows you to offer discounts on your online payments forms.
We support three types of discounts:
- Discount for a fixed amount (flat discount)
- Discount percentage
- Discount codes, which may be either for a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of the total amount due
Payment in Other Currencies
We demonstrate PayPal forms on this page with amounts in US dollars (USD) with a the dollar symbol ($), but FormSmarts also supports other currencies.
To specify another currency, change the three-letter currency code and currency symbol in the item’s description.
For example, use GA Ticket (€60 EUR)
to get a paid in Euros, VIP Ticket (£60 GBP)
for a payment in British Pounds, and Registration Fee ($60 CAD)
to collect a fee in Canadian dollars.
The text of the button inviting the user to proceed to payment is displayed in their preferred language, in any of the supported languages.
How Payment Integration Works
Payment Flow
- A customer fills out the registration form for your event and picks the registration package and extras she wants
- After reviewing her submission and confirming, she taps the Proceed to Payment button
- FormSmarts directs her to a PayPal checkout page where she can choose to sign in to her PayPal account or enter her credit card detail
- PayPal confirms the payment is successful and, if you’ve set a form Return URL on FormSmarts, provides a button for the user to navigate to a thank you page on your site
- PayPal sends an automated message to FormSmarts notifying us of a new payment
- FormSmarts verifies that the amount paid is correct and confirms the registration
- We send email notifications to the destination emails of the form
- We also send a payment confirmation to the registrant, which she can use as an e-ticket
- You can now access the registration online and see it in Excel reports.
How We Identify the PayPal Account Receiving Funds
FormSmarts directs payments to the PayPal account under the email address you use to sign in to FormSmarts.
To ensure money is sent to the correct PayPal account, your primary PayPal email address must match your FormSmarts login. You can easily change your login if needed.
To avoid users having to enter the same information twice if paying by credit card (on the form and on the payment screen), FormSmarts tries to identify the person’s first name, last name, email, postal address, and country provided on the form, and if available pass them to PayPal.
- Make sure you call the First Name and Last Name fields exactly like this.
- To allow FormSmarts to recognize an address and populate the billing address on PayPal, mame the relevant fields like on this form or this one.
Redirect Users to Your Site After Payment
If you want to redirect users to a Thank You page on your website after they have completed payment on PayPal, visit the Form Details screen of the form builder and set the Return URL of the form to your site’s URL.
Posted on May 5th, 2009 in form builder.
53 Comments
Tags: payment integration, paypal, paypal form
How to Redirect Form Respondents to Your Site
The form builder allows you to set up a Return URL for each of your forms and automatically redirect users to that URL after they've submitted a form.
To change the Return URL of a form, use the button showing a pen to edit the form and update its Return URL in the Submit Actions tab.
Redirect Form Users to Your Site
You can set up a form to skip the Confirmation page and instead automatically redirect the user to a Thank You page or download URL on your site.
To activate redirect:
- Navigate to the Form Details screen of the form builder and set a form return URL in the Submit Actions tab
- Select Redirect to Return URL in the On Submission drop-down menu
Browsers won’t redirect from a secure HTTPS page (the form) to non-secure content for security reasons. Please make sure the Return URL starts with https://
. If your site still doesn't support TLS/HTTPS, FormSmarts won't be able to redirect form respondents.
Note that form users will not get a FormSmarts Reference Number for their form submission if you redirect them to your site unless you also set up the form to send an automatic form confirmation email.
Redirect With Embedded Forms
If you have embedded a form onto your site and set it to redirect to its Return URL, some browsers may load the URL in the iframe
that contains the form. Follow these instructions to ensure the Thank You page consistently loads in the top browser window or tab.
Return URL & Site Ownership Verification
Although the redirect option is only available with paid accounts, members with a Free account can still provide a button on the form confirmation page to allow respondents to navigate to a Thank You page or other URL.
To prevent abuse, FormSmarts only provides a link to the Return URL for Free accounts if you have verified your site.
To verify your site, visit the Settings tab of the form builder.
We use the return URLs of your forms to compute the list of websites in Settings > Websites, so make sure those are correct before you attempt to verify.
PayPal Landing Page for Payment Forms
If you use our PayPal form feature to collect dues, fees or donations on your form, the Return URL will be used as the PayPal landing page. Users will be redirected to that page by PayPal after the payment has been completed.
Posted on Jul 11th, 2008 in HTML form.
22 Comments
Tags: form builder, form owner, payment integration, paypal, return url, web forms, widget