Seller to Buyer Gateways

[jayg]

Hello,

Is it possible to setup a seller to buyer gateway where the seller can have a buy button on their listing page that the buyer can use to purchase an item immediately?

Thanks,

Jay

[seymourjames +]

This has been discussed in a few places on the forum. The short answer is yes it is of course possible to permit advertisers (sellers) to put in say a paypal button for example. However, there are many consequences to allowing code to be embedded into adverts. Potential legal issues if buyers don't get the items they pay for (guess who will be in the firing line) and technical ones. You effectively allow people to put code into your system which could be malicious unless you keep a close eye on what people are doing.

[jayg]

Originally Posted by seymourjames

This has been discussed in a few places on the forum. The short answer is yes it is of course possible to permit advertisers (sellers) to put in say a paypal button for example. However, there are many consequences to allowing code to be embedded into adverts. Potential legal issues if buyers don't get the items they pay for (guess who will be in the firing line) and technical ones. You effectively allow people to put code into your system which could be malicious unless you keep a close eye on what people are doing.

Thanks for the response seymourjames. Those are valid issues you bring up, but of course I wasn't banking on sellers injecting their own payment gateway code into their listings. What I was hoping for was a built in method something like: a seller adds their PayPal (preferred payment gateway) information into their user profile, then when the account is validated, they could use that account to accept funds for the item in the listing. When they create a new listing, they decide if they want to either accept funds at a certain price point for the item in the listing (Pay Now Button with preferred payment gateway) or do a traditional classified where the seller must be contacted for the transaction to go through. I'm curious what your opinion of something like this is.

Of course there will always be issues with people not sending items, but as an example, eBay isn't going anywhere anytime soon and they pretty much wash their hands of money for goods issues with their various policies that they've put in place.

- Jay

[seymourjames +]

Not sure there is much I can add. It is of course possible to do and not that difficult. One thing I would say is you are not ebay and do not have the same legal type of protection.

[Lhotch +]

I think allowing people to buy from the classified site is a bad idea for a couple reasons. One is liability, and comparing yourself to ebay is just plain silly unless you actually have the same resources and legal clout.

Next is there is no way for the system to track inventory and why should there be, its not an auction site, its not a store, its a classified site. If you cant track inventory then you run the risk of someone sending funds for something that has been sold.

[jayg]

Thanks for the input guys. I appreciate it.

Jay

[seymourjames +]

i think your idea will only work without risks if you have just a few sellers which you hold relationships with. At the end of the day it is a classifieds advertising system and not an online store or auction type system. One thing you might like to consider is using the classifieds site as your front end but give advertisers a link to their own online store. If this is something of interests you then pm me as we are starting to do online shopping sites with Magento.