Often the first thing comes to mind when someone thinks about ecommerce is online retailers, such as Amazon. This makes sense. Retail ecommerce definitely earns the lion’s share of earnings and attention. But ecommerce can explain more than paying for physical products online. Instead, it may describe the trade of virtual goods or services, subscriptions, or even access to events and travel.
Registering for the Ignite 2015 ecommerce conference in September is a good example of ecommerce in actions.
For instance, if you wanted to attend Ignite 2015 in Dallas that September, registration is completed on line. The item bought isn’t always a physical good, but instead admission into a premiere ecommerce seminar.
It’s much like someone paying for an internet service, like a subscription to Laracasts, a service which provides PHP and Laravel frame video tutorials to paying members, or purchasing ads on Twitter.
Laracasts provides PHP and Laravel frame tutorial videos for a fee. It’s another illustration of non-retail ecommerce.
Ecommerce Entrepreneurs Unbound
Paid online services have been around for some time. Nevertheless, it is good to keep in mind that ecommerce entrepreneurs aren’t bound to selling physical items, but instead can create online revenue in many and different ways.
Ecommerce could include:
- Software as a service, platform for a service, or infrastructure for a service companies;
- Paid articles, newsletters, or video services;
- Subscriptions to information services;
- Accredited software sales;
- accessibility to stock photography, sounds, or videos;
- Paid advertisements.
APIs and Ecommerce
Retail ecommerce frequently depends upon ecommerce platforms to manage a catalog of products and make the required payment connections for selling on the internet. While the exact same ecommerce platforms might be used for the sale of specific downloadable goods or even subscriptions to articles, a number of other kinds of ecommerce would, possibly, be encumbered with a comparatively large ecommerce platform when a simple API call or two could resolve the problem.
Stripe
Take the instance of Stripe. Launched in 2011, Stripe is a payment processor built to help web developers add ecommerce capacities and steer clear of the range of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The support is the primary payment processor for Squarespace, Twitter, Salesforce, Kickstarter, Reddit, and Wired.
Stripe is a payment procedure made to help developers integrate ecommerce into practically any website or service.
Configured correctly, Stipe will use client-side JavaScript to send a customer’s payment information to not your server, but straight to the Stripe server. This manner, the customer’s payment information never passes, if you will, your controller, and eliminates your company in the PCI DSS scope.
Stripe has client libraries for PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, Node.js, Go, and iOS. Community libraries expand Stripe to C#, Clojure, Perl, as well as ColdFusion.
Stripe can also be incorporated easily via several frameworks. For instance, the agency’s API is available as a bundle (laravel/cashier) for Tayler Otwell’s popular and powerful Laravel PHP framework.
Implementing Stripe with Laravel could hardly be simpler. A programmer would configure the composer.json file and run composer upgrade.
Configuring the composer.json file amounts to adding one line. This illustration is from a practical application running on Laravel 5.0.
Register the Laravel\Cashier\CashierServiceProvider in Laravel’s app configuration file.
Assessing the service provider only requires one line of code.
Ultimately, the programmer would use PHP artisan to conduct a migration — anybody who has worked with Laravel probably knows exactly what this is — include a secret, and Stripe is prepared.
Braintree
Braintree is just another payment processing solution with a robust API. Braintree has client-side software development kits (SDKs) for iOS, Android, and JavaScript, and provides server-side SDKs for PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, Node.js, and .NET.
Braintree is just another payment process that has made it relatively simple for programmers to add ecommerce to apps, service, and sites.
The service also has an interesting”hosted fields” feature available for JavaScript that hosts payment associated form fields on Braintree’s servers, completely removing your company from PCI DSS range, even PCI DSS 3.
Braintree’s hosted areas feature provide considerable protection from PCI DSS.
PayPal
The venerable PayPal payment assistance, which will soon be parting ways with Ebay, has many possibilities for developers who wish to add ecommerce functionality to almost any site or service.
Perhaps the best know service discussed within this guide, PayPal also provides solutions for developers and ecommerce entrepreneurs.
The business has mobile SDKs for iOS and Android. It delivers a representational state transfer (REST) API which is readily obtained via cURL, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, Node.js, and C#. Ultimately, PayPal also has what it calls a traditional API which uses name-value pairs and the easy object access protocol (SOAP).
Possibly more complicated than other payment API alternatives, PayPal’s services are just another example of how developers could decide to additional ecommerce payments to any service or website.
Authorize.Net
A pioneer in ecommerce solutions, Authorize.Net also includes a rather extensive API offering, including special services for server integration, what Authorize.Net calls”Advanced Integration,” and a comparatively newer guide post method, aimed at minimizing PCI DSS scope.
Authorize.net includes quite extensive APIs for its payment processing solutions.
The Business has SDKs for PHP, Ruby, Java, and C#, and support for Android and iOS using the innovative integration API.
Putting Ecommerce APIs to Use
Stripe, Braintree, PayPal, and Authorize.Net are only four examples of payment solutions that can help any company monetize more or less any content, website, or service. There are a lot more choices — such as Venmo or some technical Bitcoin chips — for accepting all kinds of payments.
The point is only that ecommerce entrepreneurs have several choices for altering any online business idea to a profitable enterprise, in part, as a result of easy-to-implement payment-processing APIs.