How to offer Mangopay as a payment method to hubs? [Split Payments]

This is definitely something that has been requested and would open us up to new users here, particularly farmers markets wanting to offer an online option but not wanting to take on a ‘hub’ role. I remember talking to the pin payments guy about it a while ago and it sounded quite doable, but as @lin_d_hop says, it’s the interface for enabling people to configure as they need that will be critical.

Pin payments obviously no good outside aus, so not worth doing. but i think mangopay not available in australia, and not sure about outside EU? is it available in the USA and Canada for example @MyriamBoure? I guess ideally we’d come up with some kind of interface that enabled rule-setting, that could then be plugged into the site admin’s chosen gateway - but suspect that might be way too complex.

anyway, definitely a project in itself, and possibly a good one for a sample ‘project-based fundraiser’ because it’s easily defineable, something we know lots of people want and a big jump in functionality

NB. implementing this could be done to enable the site admin, or potentially user, to automatically allocate fee (e.g. 2%) to OFN and get around the whole invoicing thing

@Kirsten here is what I found in there website:

Your company must be based in EU zone.
Regarding the PAYINS (Cash-in payments), your users can pay from anywhere in the world as long as the country is not black listed.
Regarding the PAYOUTS (Cash-out payments), we cover the SEPA, the UK, the US and the Canadian zones.

So it seems they are not in Australia.

It seems Stripe Connect may be a solution that could work for every countries… https://stripe.com/connect
If you look from stripe.com/au you will see the australian prices…
It’s pretty cheap and seems to be pretty adaptable everywhere.
I will contact them to see how that could work for the OFN.
I know for Europe Mangopay is definitely the best choice, but let’s see if we can have some further mutualisation possible on this project if we look at Stripe :wink:

Hi again here!
Do you think we could have an estimate on the work needed to implement Mangopay @RohanM ? Maybe that could be funded on cobudget as this seems to be something needed by various local communities… and the work on adapting the process will be useful for other multivendor payment gateway so it can benefit communities who won’t use Mangopay as well. If it’s easier we can find someone who has already integrated Mangopay to work on it when we have a budget (depending if it’s better to have someone who knows very well the OFN code or someone who knows very well Mangopay ;-))
Thanks!

@MyriamBoure
Hiya!
Why did you change from Stripe back to Mangopay?

Do you have any budget to contribute toward this? The UX design will be expensive. UK would like this feature and are willing to contribute some toward it. I would say we are looking somewhere in the $10,000s area to properly implement and spec (I really just pulled this figure out of thin air so don’t give any weight to it).

I am wondering how much other regions have to contribute toward this, and thus how close this is to getting to the development pipeline. Do you have any thoughts and ideas? I know you need this. How much do others need it?

Also, thorough specification of this feature will be a big task in itself, costing 1000sAUD. Do you have the budget to properly specify so that we can then look at crowdfunding the implementation?

1 Like

Hi @lin_d_hop!
In France for the moment we don’t have any budget, the project grows in a pretty organic way, but we are setting up an entity now and will work on fund raising in the next months. I think OFN has really an amazing potential in France given the interest we receive and the first partnership proposals. So yes this is something that we really need in France, but for the moment we have no budget and I can’t tell when it will come. I think Norway might also want to contribute to this feature, @CynthiaReynolds and @sigmundpetersen I let you answer for Norway.
I think Italy also need it? @fraschelo am I right? I don’t know though if you already have a budget to contribute with…
Basically all European instances would need this Mangopay integration…
Stripe could work but it seems more complicated to integrate, and Mangopay is really the “standard” in France now for marketplaces, while Stripe is not so common…

@MyriamBoure if mangopay is such a strong leader in eu, it might be worth contacting them to see if they have any plans to go outside europe and explain how this is holding us back from using?

This is big . . I think we need to make sure that we’re thinking about this use case alongside the payment in standing orders (which we’re working on in shorter term) to make sure that we’re setting up a pathway / gateway that works for both

@oeoeaio @danielle just making sure you’ve seen this thread as is relevant to discussion next week

1 Like

I just asked them, will tell you when I have a feedback…

Of course @MyriamBoure!

Here in Italy we have exactly the same legal issues as France, hubs can’t be considered as “intermediates”, they should be considered as “business provider” only.

I’ve ask to a friend-developer about Mangopay. He told me that it could be a good payment technology, even if it’s not so common (in Italy at least). It also has “gem”, not bad!

If it’s useful I could ask him to estimate the work needed to implement Mangopay. Let me know.

We haven’t a budget yet, I’m waiting for LAG’s Call for proposal (Local Action Group) but it’s taking longer than I expected.

Back in India too I am trying to think through the legal/tax issues of setting up a hub.
To begin with, we are targetting a more informal space, and if we ask the hub managers, along with coordination between producers and consumers, also to manage tax & business organisation registration etc, would be a difficult to get them started.
So as @MyriamBoure says, “service provider” category fits fine and might navigate through the legal/tax issues for small sized hubs.
But as some other people said, not sure how fair would be it to push producers to register for certain payment gateway services.
Also in India, I dont see Mangopay still being on the verge of launching.
Stripe has just decided to launch and would take sometime to come up, but meanwhile we can go around by using some other country registration, if that is the only hurdle.
There are some local players like Payumoney which is widely used in India, and has this feature and also Citrus .
I am at this point not sure of financial commitment, but will try my best to pool in support in terms of resources for development & testing.

@Kirsten Ok, I didn’t get a very precise answer from Mangopay but the guy told me that we need to have “host” in Europe to sign the contract with Mangopay, but then the payment gateway supports multiple currencies and cash-in/cash-out in multiple countries…
So it seems that any other country could use Mangopay through one instance based in Europe who would agree to be the “host” for the Mangopay contract.
For example if UK would play that role, Mangopay would sign the contract only with OFN UK, and the other instances would “buy” the payment gateway service through OFN UK… I’m not sure what it implies in term of paperwork on the part of the host. And I’m a bit surprised that for example OFN Australia could use a payment system that has not been approved in Australia. I’m also afraid it’s bureaucracy we would like to avoid, to have those kind of global host for payement solutions…

If that doesn’t work we still have the Stripe option, which seems to be more “international”, but I don’t know any company using their marketplace solution (In France they all use Mangopay), and I had a feedback from a developer saying that Stripe integration was a mess, but maybe we should have someone more technical look at it? @fraschelo any feedback about the Stripe marketplace solution on your side?

@sreeharsha it seems the payment systems you mentioned only work for India :frowning:

But I guess the important here is to make sure that the logic of those payment mapping solutions / marketplace solutions have similar logics so that the work done in adaptating the processes can fit different payment solutions?

Update from Mangopay: “It’s possible for an Australia enity for example to use the host contract based in Europe, but you need to consider the currencies we support for the moment, and unfortunately the AUD is not yet supported.”…

@MyriamBoure as you mentioned I think if the backend process of OFN is in sync with the process of distributing the amount to multiple producers/sellers, we can figure out the integration with a local or international partner.
I an sure, not everyone will stick to one payment gateway for various reasons as discussed above.

@MyriamBoure
Since were talking payment gateways, what are your thoughts on moving forward with stripe? Do we need to do Mangopay as well? UK have some budget for stripe and potentially marketplace payments so would be great to be on the same page.

1 Like

@lin_d_hop sorry for the delay in my answer, I was disconnected for some days :slight_smile: I answered directly in the other discussion. If Stripe Connect provides the same features than Mangopay and is available in France, that’s fine to me to start with (I think the rates are pretty similar) and I agree that it’s a better option to start with as it’s more international. I couldn’t see clearly how the Stripe e-wallet and flow mapping works in comparision with Mangopay, I guess there are also some legal constraints as they use e-wallet (like we have to ask suppliers official registration document for the creation of their e-wallet… that’s how it works in Mangopay, I guess there is something similar in Stripe)…

1 Like

@lin_d_hop Given the latest answer from @oeoeaio (Integrating Stripe into OFN) It doesn’t seem that Stripe answers the requirement… Stripe doesn’t do the multi-vendor marketplace job :frowning: So we will need to find fundings for the Mangopay job. @oeoeaio @lin_d_hop do you think we can have a more precise quotation for the Mangopay job? So that I can see where I can find money for that in France:-)
Do you think the job list I started above is exhaustive, in terms of impacts on processes?

is it maybe a problem that doing a quote for the mangopay job is in fact ‘a job’ as it will require quite a bit of thinking?! @oeoeaio do you think it would be half day or more like a day to do it properly? any idea?

Hi @Kirsten, @danielle, @oeoeaio
I would suspect actually speccing this work would take a lot longer, closer to 2 or 3 days.

Checking with the UK management team, but I’m hoping UK can pay for this specification work.
@oeoeaio could you quote for how long you would feel comfortable with for the spec of this functionality?

Thanks,
Lynne

Will check with @oeoeaio this week and get back to you @lin_d_hop. With this and multilingual switching and all the standing orders work (and the couple of PRs I think we’re still working through) we’re pretty full up. Going to chat with the team tomorrow and get a clearer view on when we can get all this quoting into the pipe and done as well as delivering the rest. Stay tuned.

1 Like

Hi gang, @MyriamBoure, @lin_d_hop, @danielle. Apologies for being off the radar a bit.

Also pinging @stveep, as implementing the gateway is likely to have similarities with the work done for Stripe.

I think @MyriamBoure’s breakdown of the tasks at the top of this thread is pretty good.

Part A is the implementation of the basic Mangopay payment gateway. This will be similar to the work required to set up Stripe in a lot of ways. I am unsure yet as to whether Mangopay offers an equivalent of Stripe Connect (ie. allowing the instance to create payments on behalf of enterprises through a single API key). Scoping this part of the work (ie. understanding the capabilities of the API, and how we will need to implement it) is likely to take a similar amount of time to Stripe, so perhaps 3 days.

Part B represents the work required to allow payments to be split and distributed to the appropriate places. B1, B2 and B3 are the changes that need to be made in the OFN to allow this to happen. I can’t think of anything else that will be required as yet, but maybe something else will come out of the scoping process. I would like to allow 2 days for scoping to cover any unforeseen requirements for this feature.

B4, B5 feel like things that should be handled outside of the OFN, ie. enterprise users need to be responsible for ensuring they comply with Mangopay’s requirements before attempting to use it through OFN. Is this reasonable?

Just so that I am clear @MyriamBoure, are you saying that C (discounted rate across instances) is something that will be possible, or that it’s something we should try to investigate?

Thank you @oeoeaio for taking the time to give a first look at the Mangopay case :slight_smile:
For B4 at B5, I’m not sure that can be done outside the scope of OFN, I think we need to understand better how the API work to be able to answer that. Mangopay has a legal requirement for those “official document” (they have banking authorisation so need to comply with according law) and I guess they would have implemented their rule in some automated process… So maybe a user who has bought for 2500€ won’t be able to pay anymore until he has uploaded the given document. I guess it’s the same for registration process for supplier, I think the API make it compulsory for a producer to have uploaded some document for his e-wallet to be activated. So my first bet is “that is within the scope”… but you will see in work A I guess!
If you want I can call my contact at Mangopay and ask for this specific information.

I can also ask more precisely about the discount rate, the guy told me about it, the rate depends on volumes, so if we have only one account for the whole OFN sub-accounts, we benefit for volume discount. This is likely to happen only when we have enough transaction though, and in that case we need to have one OFN instance who is the “host” of the mangopay contract (I guess payments though can be done via each instance, so I guess it’s just a “legal host”)

I will ask those two questions anyway and try to come back to you with a more precise answer.