Payvment: Is D7 Shopping Cart This Good?

I bet the Boonex team would love to team up with a company like Payvment.com. They have an amazing shopping cart that is easy to integrate, looks great, super user-friendly, free (no commissions), and runs on the Amazon cloud.

However, the most interesting part is that it uses PayPal's new Adaptive Payments and that is what would really function very well with Dolphin.

If you take a look at the current Dolphin 7 shopping cart, you will notice it actually includes two carts in one. One is called the Site Cart, the other is called the Member's Carts. Apparently, the Boonex team would like for both the Admin to sell site-wide items, as well as allowing individual members to sell their items. That's why we see the two carts.

Boonex is attempting to keep track of all sales across all the members, including the admin. When someone adds an item to their cart, it is automatically categorized either in the Site Cart or under the Members' Carts. Those that get categorized under the Members' Carts are further sub-categorized by the actual seller of the item. Take for example, items A and B, being sold by members A and B respectively. If I visit the site and add both items A and B to my cart, I will see both items appear in the Members' Carts. Further, item A will appear as being sold by member A, and item B will appear as being sold by member B.

When the buyer ultimately checks out, each member will be credited with the sale of any item(s) the buyer has purchased from them. In order for a member to be credited, he or she must have a PayPal account registered on their account profile. Also, any item sold by the admin is also credited to the admin account.

Anyway, this is what I think Boonex is trying to do with their fancy shopping cart and Dolphin store concept. I give them lots of praise for this endeavor, which is not an easy task. When and if they get all this done with most of the bugs ironed out, Dolphin should be among the first social networks to offer such a thing. And since this deals with real money belonging to real people, Boonex better be sure they get this piece of their software right.

Enter Payvment. Who are they and what are they doing? Read this review about them first to get an idea: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/14/payvment-enables-retail-storefronts-on-facebook-via-paypals-adaptive-payments-api/

Then go to their site and follow the Demo button here: http://www.payvment.com/tutorials/  Also read their FAQs. If you get through all that here are the keys items I found that would ideally fit in with Dolphin:

1. Under the FAQ "What is this about my customers being able to complete their purchase even if they are no longer on my website?" we find the statement:

Plus the consumer can have a cart that includes items that belong to multiple retailers with a single checkout that pays you and all other retailers in one transaction.

You may recognize that statement as implementing the power of PayPal's new Adaptive Payments. In a nutshell that means Payvment has already worked out all the logic and ironed out all the bugs required to properly credit any and all sellers. That is not an easy thing to do, and if Boonex is tied up doing other things, it might be a good idea to team up with Payvment to get this piece done.

2. The other thing that should appeal to Boonex is found in the FAQ "What does it cost to use the shopping cart web service?" Their answer is: It's free. Payvment does not charge anything nor do we take any cut of your sales revenue.

I truly hope Boonex would review Payvment and their offerings. These days it is easier and more cost effective to partner with other services that can complement your own. Go Boonex Go!!!