Custom Payments Widget

jasonspelts
Contributor
Contributor

I have a website where I'd like my customers to pay money for my services. Different customers pay different amounts, based on my hourly rate. I perform tasks remotely.

 

The problem is I need a widget to work identical to a 'Donate Now' widget. Only, I don't want anything like 'Donate' in the process. As well, I don't want it to say 'Buy Now' either.

 

** What I need is a 'Pay Now' button that will allow my users to enter the amount they want to be billed to their credit card. **

 

Any way to do this? I think this would be useful to thousands of businesses like mine, honestly I'm surprised a widget like this has not been developed yet.

 

Thanks for any/all help!

 

-Jason

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5 REPLIES 5

jasonspelts
Contributor
Contributor

It would really be nice if there was a way to get a response from PayPal.

 

Or anyone else with a suggestion.

 

Thanks!

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dune17856
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Jason,

If your creating the button using the three step form in the merchant section of your account you'll find the selctions to get what you want.

 

1) change the button text to "Pay Now":

 

-  in the step one tab click on the "Customize text or appearence" link in the box that shows the customers view of the button

- In the resulting selections you'll find a "Select button text" pulldown tyhat will do what you want.

 

2) Ways to control the payment amount:

 

Option1: This is a little bit of a hack but you could set the price to your hourly rate and let clients change the quantity:

 - In the step three tab (customize Advanced features) you'll find the selection to let people change the quantity

 

Option 2: In step one you can leave the price blank and on the payments page there will be a box that lets users enter the price.

 

option 3: In step one you can leave the price blank and set up multiple price option boxes for each expected charge. Just click the "Add drop-down menu with price/option" checkbox.

 

Options 1 and 3 avoid users entering a non standard price.

 

 

adam.

 

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jasonspelts
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks, Adam... That was a little helpful but now I'm curious about a couple of other things...

 

I took your advice and used Option #2 to allow the user to enter their own price. Many times I can't bill for whole hours, and outsourced service charges (billable to the client) vary. Sometimes I even have to tell the client to pay me what THEY think the service was worth.

 

The only thing now is the actual checkout page. For the customer, it's a little confusing. For example, the textbox they are to plug their payment amount into says "Item Price". They're not actually purchasing an 'item'. Is there any way I can manipulate that to say "Payment Amount"?

 

And would there be any way to have a default description? For most of my customers, it's not quite what they'd expect to see.

 

I'm sure there must be other people out there with needs similar to this.

 

Here's the link to the checkout page, to give anyone a better idea:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_flow&SESSION=-pk8w050uDuVYjS2BbfN0ASjKpbw8M2Jp7MS5RRuW...

 

 

Thanks in advance for any & all help!

-Jason

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EMPStudios
New Community Member

I could use this too.  Often times we create an offline invoice/bid.  A 50% or materials deposit is required to begin work.  We want to use paypal to receive this deposit.  They may or may not use paypal to complete payment and I'm not interested in using the paypal invoicing service.  Our invoices evolve in the creative process and we primarily want to use paypal as a convenience for 1st time customers (and slow payers:-) 

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zephyrmike
New Community Member

I would love to know the answer to this. I too would like to change "Item Price" to "Payment Amount".

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