SOFORT Payment

Lawrence

I'm pleased to say we now have SOFORT payment available on Brick Owl via Stripe. As I understand it this payment method is similar to iDeal but used in more European countries You can see a brief description here https://stripe.com/gb/payments/payment-methods-guide. You will need to enable that on your stripe account, you can see further information here https://www.brickowl.com/mystore/settings/payment_methods

I'd be interested to hear from stores how they get on with this

We've also had a few orders paid via iDeal already in the Netherlands

Hoddie

Bancontact would be good if you're looking for suggestions. It is to Belgium what iDeal is to the Netherlands. Something like 2/3rds of all online transactions in Belgium are paid this way.

Lawrence

@Hoddie that's now enabled if you'd like to try that out. Fortunately iDeal/Sofort/Bancontact have very similar integration

Hoddie

Thanks for that. I just placed an order with myself. The bank app through which I pay took me to a page on girogate.be, saying "Your payment has been approved by your card issuer. The payment process will automatically continue on your other device." This is a little unusual, but perhaps something to do with Stripe.

The order shows as 'pending' but with a transaction ID, and clicking that link takes me to the following URL:

https://dashboard.stripe.com/payments/{id}

and a message on the Stripe site: "Sorry, something went wrong."

The payment doesn't show in the list of payments on the Stripe website.

Hoddie

I'll check Stripe again in an hour or so, perhaps there's a small delay.

Hoddie

The order still shows as pending and there's no payment listed on Stripe. But the payment definitely left my bank.

Lawrence

This is related to our connectivity issues earlier, the webhook from stripe timed out, but they will retry, i'll check again in an hour.

Hoddie

I was wondering the same. Thanks.

Hoddie

Excellent, it works perfectly. Got the email confirmation, the payment shows on Stripe, and the refund works automatically.

Thanks for implementing this, really do appreciate it!

brickrepository

I'm looking into enabling all of these extra payment methods, especially the ones via Stripe because it seems like all it takes is enabling them in Stripe and BrickOwl, with no extra configuration necessary.

Given they're so easy to configure, are there any reasons not to?

For example, one thing that worries me is this bit regarding SOFORT:

"One important detail for businesses to realize is that although successful authorization indicates a very high likelihood of payment, funds are not guaranteed to businesses until they are actually received, which is typically 2 business days later (but can be up to 14 days later)."

So this can be tricky, and maybe one will only want to enabled it for small orders.
The other 2 Stripe-enabled payment methods (iDEAL and Bancontact) get an immediate payment confirmation, so the above problem doesn't apply.


Is there anything else? Like extra fees or something?

Lawrence

We've had our first few SOFORT payments, the way we've now set it up is it will be pending, then a few minutes later after the customer completes the bank process, it changes to payment sent. Then a few days later it will change to payment received. So even though there is a delay, it still integrates nicely with the current workflow, and you don't need to wonder if you have payment or not.

Hoddie

I've had an order paid with Bancontact already too

Just to clarify about the SOFORT workflow Lawrence, it doesn't show as 'payment received' until it's actually cleared then?

Lawrence

@Hoddie I believe so, this reflects how it's shown in Stripe too where they still call it pending for the first few days. We handle PayPal eCheque payments in the same way.

Hoddie

Good to know. I'm really not familiar with this payment method but happy to give it a try.

DeichBricks

I too had my first order with SOFORT payment yesterday but it did not change its status to "Payment submitted" but remains in "Pending". Could you check what happened in this case? (Order #6899383). In Stripe the payment still has status "Zahlung ausstehend" (=payment pending).

Lawrence

@DeichBricks We put the code in place to change it to payment submitted yesterday around midday, and it looks like your payment was received before that. It should work on future payments. For now you can change it to payment submitted manually

DeichBricks

Thanks for the insight, Lawrence, I will do so.

brickrepository

Good to know about that extra step in the integration that distinguishes between "Payment Sent" and "Payment Received".
This eliminates my main concern about the payment method. I'll just add a note on it explaining that I'll have to wait for the payment confirmation before sending the order, and that it may take a few days.