Is FuturePay required when using WorldPay for vBulletin recurring billing?

[Steve S]

Hello,

I understand that FuturePay is the only (non-PayPal) payment processor that vBulletin supports for recurring billing.

I noticed that WorldPay has a "FuturePay" service which allows customers to enter into recurring billing agreements. Although it sounds like this service requires customers to enter recurring billing information on WorldPay's site.

Is FuturePay required when using vBulletin for recurring payments? I called WorldPay to discuss, but did not have enough knowledge about the vBulletin API to determine if it was needed or not.

Thanks!
Steve

[pmkb]

I was researching this as well since it doesn't look like 2checkout is a viable solution without handling recurring payments. Then I saw that Worldpay charges a hefty setup and monthly fee - more than I can justify.

[Steve S]

The only pay processor supported for recurring billing is PayPal. WorldPay is not supported for recurring billing, despite the Paid Subscription GUI screen including it as an option. I have this from the President of vBulletin.

I am less knowledgable about the PayPal option, but I believe the customer must have a PayPal account for the recurring billing option. Even though PayPal can do standard merchant services w/o a PayPal account, recurring billing can only be done via PayPal account.

I briefly considered aMember as an alternative, but have walked away from using vBulletin as a pay community for the time being.

Hope this was helpful!

[pmkb]

That is a shame. Not everyone can or will use PayPal. vBulletin really needs a viable alternative/complement to it.

[Steve S]

Trust me, I was very upset. We burned time and cash getting setup for a pay community. I couldn't have known ahead of time how limited the options were. I was also upset how lax people were in terms of understanding the impacts it made to me. Further, I was given incorrect information twice about what did and did not work with recurring billing.

I must mention, however, that an email to the President of vBulletin could not have been handled better. He researched my issue and the history of the problems I had and got back to me the next day. I was very impressed with how quickly and fully he dealt with this and how accountable he was.

If I were to use vBulletin as a pay member service, I would probably consider a product like aMember or something similar. While it makes the implementation more complex, I wouldn't mind have a "third party" product handle all the payment processor and subscription stuff. Note that I have never used it and am not qualified to endorse that particular product. But a robust, third party tool may be the best choice. I agree that PayPal is too small of a chunk of the market to be the only option.