API of what payment system is worth to be installed? Evaluation of payment systems’ API

The Internet has already absorbed virtually all economic and financial fields of activities. Almost all population layers in different countries and continents have begun to live on-line. And why not if Internet-services become wider and wider each day and provide in point of fact infinite possibilities.

Payment by means of e-money is an ordinary operation for residents of Europe and USA as well as for youth of CIS countries. Americans mandatory have on the desktop any Internet-browser, tag mark “My computer” as well as “Ebay”. And how not to mention purchases in the on-line shops! For a day in Google has been processed about 4 millions of requests with a word “Buy” and it means that trust to the Internet-shops and, as consequence, to the paid services reaches its apogee. Any businessman can create his e-shop, for these purposes it is enough for him to use services of a specialist or to install himself a site slider, connect to any payment system and fill-in a catalog with his goods. The only difficultness is to connect payment systems and we will talk exactly about it.

Any payment system connects to the sites by means of API - set of functions and interfaces which allow working with instrumental of the concrete system, connect it to your own site, adjust and use it. We will consider the best payment systems (to our opinion) existing today, namely: Perfect Money, WebMoney, Liberty Reserve, Alert Pay and PayPal. Evaluation will be made upon the following parameters: easiness of connection, functionality, availability of different programming languages, description.

WebMoney – is probably an unconditional leader in CIS countries. The system offers 3 interfaces of API - Web Merchant Interface, Click&Buy Merchant Interface, WM Automation Interface.

Web Merchant Interface allows adding to your web-site all required matters in order to begin to take WM for the provided goods and services. Connection takes only two minutes. Everything has been made very presentable and understandable for an ordinary user.

In order to activate all functions it is enough to add code to your page and input your purse number. The only problem is that WebMoney creates mess with personal certificates. Without personal certificate you can operate only with the limited version of interface. The payment system allows working with all programming languages – php, asp, perl. One more plus is connection of CURL functions which allows directly interacting with WebMoney site. For those who know nothing in programming WebMoney provides possibility of payment with the help of other resources Plati.ru, Digiseller.ru. Most of web-masters use these last two functions.

PerfectMoney is enough young payment system but it has already proved its competence long ago. You can see it at once when enter “Perfect Money API” page. The system interacts with PHP and ASP as well as PERL and PYTHON. System developers take care of small group of portals on PYTHON, if somebody has forgotten YouTube has been written exactly there. Interfaces for ASP are collected into one wonderful class and the most pleasant are examples which are made with detailed description. Moreover program code in each example is twice less than comments and it means that the code has been written by professionals. If you think that developers of PerfectMoney have limited with this you are wrong. On the site they have collected plagins for the most popular sliders of world’s Internet-shops - ZenCart, ShopCMS, osCommerce, Shop-Script, Cubecart, VirtueMart, CS-Cart, UberCart, XCart, phpShop.

Is it not enough for you? Then write to the technical support service. As for me I got a reply in 10 minutes and was offered free help from which I did not reject and was satisfied with the job. The only minus is absence of operation with CURL library which can speed-up scripts a little.

AlertPay has strong API supporting about 7 programming languages and detailed description. But there is one “but” which is fully disappointed. Each of function, for example, check of balance, payment against invoice, acceptance of invoices, are described with different classes and it is very inconvenient for the developers not even saying about ordinary users. But it is not all; the system forms tremendous inconvenient POST and GETs requests for transmission of data which fill with nausea after operation with the system.

The description is very similar with Webmoney system and in order to reach classes you have to do 5 clicks. API AlertPay is designed only for the experienced developers. Though it is fast, qualitative written, supports a lot of languages but not convenient as API usually is written for easy-to-use by clients and not in order to create puzzles.

PayPal giant has created serious API, but its description is disappointed strongly. Almost all main data needs to scoop from PayPal developers’ club as documentation is inconvenient. Java, PHP, .NET, ColdFusion are good but to connect them to your site will be not so simple. The description is provided in PDF files containing different schemes. The description is normal only in English, translation to the other languages is, put it mildly, not so good. But you will like performance and operation speed. Connection takes a lot of time especially for the sites on ColdFusion and .NET. The only plus here is developers’ club where by listing 10-20 blogs you can find a number of different interesting posts and opinions upon API, but there is not so much really useful things.

Liberty Reserve provides only php-classes. The instruction and description are on the very feeble level and you have to look code yourself and understand it. The principle and structure of interaction is, unfortunately, very short and incomplete. Developers of this system are preparing API for C# and ASP but now it is only promises. Also I did not find already implemented modules for the concrete systems so to connect this payment system to your projects will be enough problematically.

Today all largest payment systems have their own API, some of them envisage the fact that presently projects are written on the different languages the other ones do not provide it. The level of description is different in each system.

The 5th place in our rating we give to Liberty Reserve as the system has developed API only for php as well as for unsatisfied instructions which describes only principle of API operation but not the system as a whole.

The 4th place is taken by PayPal. The main advantage is variety of the system interfaces but there are only few descriptions, their format is inconvenient and in order to understand anything you have to register in PayPal developers’ club and search the required information on the blogs.

The 3rd place is given to WebMoney. Of course it is written as easy-to-use system wih a number of examples. Interfaces allow working with both elementary and very complicated functions. Examples demonstrate possibilities of the payment system very clear as well as show how to install it on the site.

The 2nd place is AlertPay. Though its description is a little bit worse than WebMoney, but the system provides the biggest quantity of classes which have been written on the different languages. It is worth to notice large number of flowcharts and tables which popularly show operation of the system. Examples of connection and modules for the popular systems are presented in a good shape.

The 1st place is given to “PerfectMoney”. It wins because of the simplicity, availability and pithiness of the descriptions of its interfaces. For those who do not engage in programming Perfect Money provides good modules and plagins which allow installing the payment system to your site in two clicks. Interfaces support a number of programming languages and the most advantage is that support service explains promptly and clearly all nuances relative to API system.

With further development of e-commerce and Internet-trading the payment systems will have to simplify to minimum all difficulties connecting with installation of the payment system to the sites. Otherwise they carry a risk to lose a lot of clients who cannot attach the interfaces to clients’ sites. So we will continue to follow API development. And wish you to secure payment systems to your projects without any problem.

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