Website Development

When choosing how to accept payments online in Canadian dollars you have many options to choose from. Most of these solutions can integrate with Drupal and Übercart.

We at Kafei Interactive have supported Canadian dollar gateways including PayPal, Moneris, TD Merchant Services (Beanstream) and US-dollar gateways that connect to Authorize.net and Skipjack. We have also assisted organizations fine-tune their servers to meet their PCI obligations.

Canadian Payment Gateways

These solutions are all ones where your website must be configured to securely accept payments online. You accept the credit card on one of your site pages so the client never leaves. A payment gateway is most useful when you are doing more than $5000 in monthly sales.

If you already have a merchant account with any of these providers you're already half way there.

• Moneris (Royal Bank & Bank of Montreal)
• Paymentech (Scotiabank & National Bank)
• Global Payments (CIBC and CITI Corp.)
• TD Merchant Services (combination of TD and First Data)
• Desjardins

Source

Some of these accept low risk and others accept high-risk accounts. High risk stuff includes web hosting and anything related to adult services. InternetSecure resells for Paymentech if that is what you are looking for.

Interac Online

This is a new "pay page" service that is offered with some payment gateways listed above. Basically the bank has to allow their web banking interface to be used as a pay-page. So you get redirected to your own bank or credit union to pay then kicked back to the site at the end of the payment process. No confidential data is revealed to the merchant using this system.

It takes a week or more to get your money if you use Interac Online according to one provider. They initiate a transfer from the source bank, wait two days, then hold the money a week(?! not sure why this is necessary), then two more days for the transfer. I'm sure what they probably meant to say was that it takes about a week in total.

Using Canadian Dollar Payment Services

Here is where things get interesting.

For processing less than $5000 in monthly sales. Not advisable for non-profits and some others because sometimes PayPal withholds your money, for up to 6 months! Usually it takes about two days (as with most services listed on this page).

There are no Drupal modules for Interac Email Money Transfers because people need to add you as a payee in their web banking using your email address as the "target account". Configuration varies by bank or credit union. If a client were to ask for this in Übercart I would recommend making it like a Cash/Cheque option where you acknowledge payment after.

• PayPal - can be used as a gateway and/or pay page in Canadian dollars
• Interac Email Money Transfer - payee must add your email address as a recipient transfers complete in about 4h!
• Hyperwallet - allows you to transfer between any Canadian accounts

Cheques and Cash On Delivery

Sounds absurd but it is more common than you think. Many small businesses make deliveries and bring the product direct to the consumer. In these cases we often provide a cheque or a pay by cash option just in case the client needs a "live" option to pay. On our websites we produce when you choose the cheque option customers are then presented with a billing address to "complete" the sale. The transaction is marked as a pending order until you as the store owner update the sales record.

This week I had one of those really intense programming experiences: not one but two all-night coding marathons. When I find myself in these situations my body clock goes into it's own time zone and my diet often falls apart.

Sometimes I find myself eating at really dodgy all-night restaurant in these situations. Sometimes I don't eat all. Other times I almost die of pizza and/or coffee overdose.

What usually follows after the coding marathon where this happens? Usually getting sick from all that terrible food (or lack of food). So here is some wisdom for the masses:

Make Soup

Here is a recipe my Wordpress dev roommate and I developed over the winter. It has two tracks for most ingredients so there are usually enough foods around the house to make it happen (provided you have 1 cup of lentils). We usually just cook it in one big pot and add things until it is done.

This soup is vegan. It is a life saver if you cannot digest anything else. If you really must add meat, I highly recommend bacon: the programmers' choice in meats.

Our recipe follows. Everything in the "eat" section is optional. We have never had a bad experience with this recipe! Even better if you include all the options and use broth rather than water... but we never have all that stuff in stock.

Enjoy!

Wash

1 cup brown lentils

Fry

2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion OR garlic, chopped/minced
1 medium red bell pepper OR tomato, chopped

Spice

1 tbsp fennel
½ tsp ground cumin OR coriander
¼ tsp. ground red pepper OR cayenne pepper

Boil

4 cups water
1 cup lentils
½ tsp salt

Eat

1 tbsp lemon!
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp chopped parsley

Now get back to work, hippy!

This week I finally bit the bullet and purchased a high-speed internet connection in USB form so I can work outdoors with my laptop this summer. I have done much research and had many questions along the way so this article hopes to resolve some of those frequent and common questions.

Does it work on Linux?

Yes. It does. All of the "Internet Sticks" or "USB Internet keys" currently sold in Canada support Linux.

In Debian 6 the device will be detected within about a minute and will then appear in your Network Manager menu. Don't click the connection yet - you have to configure a couple things first. You should open your network connections, click the tab where your "modem" should be and select "add provider". This will ask you what country and provider you are using. Do that! It has the 'dialup' info for your carrier ready to go for you.

The other thing it will need to know is a PIN number if you are on Telus. I put that in the PIN field and the password field. I put my wireless number into the username fields as some forums recommended. Apparently does not like that field to be blank.

What is the coverage like? Which network?

All of the Canadian offerings are currently on the same network technology, HSPA+, which is a variant of GSM. Those familiar with wireless will recognize that Bell and Telus are jumping over to the GSM side of the spectrum. Because of this, I considered all operators equally.

Telus and Bell have roaming agreements with the prairie telecoms and I plan to do some traveling though that region regularly... so they win in this case. I have Rogers network access already with my cellphone but they only really have coverage in Manitoba and some parts of Alberta.

For those new to this, Rogers runs it's own network, while Telus and Bell roam with each other's networks. They all use the same technology, but there are effectively two big networks in Canada.

Fortunately, I checked in on Sasktel's LTE/HSPA+ rollout and the places I'm traveling to are already running on the "new" network Telus/Bell/Sasktel network. So from now on I should always have a connection while I'm in the country, having the new Internet stick and my existing Rogers phone to rely on.

What is the pricing like? How much data?

Even though I am a web developer I use very little amounts data each month. Seriously. My work is all done on the server, so I connect to that and all the dirty work is done there. No uploading/downloading/uploading process in my world. I also do not watch a lot of video or listen to music online.

Having monitored my laptop bandwidth for a few months I can say I use about 5gb of data on wifi, where I assume no limitations, and about 0.5gb on my wireless account if I use it a lot (full time for 10 days will do it). I plan on using about 3x more data on the new wireless connection than my old one, so 1.5gb should be about right.

All of the network operators in Canada basically offer the same plan. Due to the potential for going wildly over budget I recommend the "flexi" plan (it is roughly $5 more but automatically adjusts to the next level if you go over).

Again, all major operators have this on offer:

$35 starter rate (500mb or so)
$55-60 midrange (up to 2gb on most or 3gb on Bell)
$70ish high/fulltime (5gb)

Anything over that will cost you about $50/gig and in my case Telus is going to stop the card from functioning at the 10gb mark. Probably a good idea since that would mean an extra $250 on top of my monthly bill.

Which Card is Best?

Telus offers two cards, Bell one, and Rogers two.

The best one on Telus is the Sierra series, so sayeth the forums. Construction of the card is better?

The best one on Rogers is the MTE variety. It seems to get higher speeds.

The best one on Bell is... well who cares about Bell.

I ended up with the lower option of the two Sierra cards Telus had on offer, the Sierra 306. I chose this one for a few reasons:

• It only required a 1 year contract
• It supported the same network(s) as the higher end model
• The difference between high speed and ultra high speed is irrelevant (it is just reason to use more data)
• The pricing for the higher end model is dumber than dumb. The outright cost is $29 more than the lower one, but you pay $79 up front on contract vs. $0... why so much more? Dumb.
• Currently the bulk of users on the Telus/Bell network are using the older network technology, so there should be no harm in choosing a mid-range card on the new network... the network has few users thus lots of bandwidth.

Final Thoughts / Observations

The stick is much faster than I expected. It is amazing to use.

As I had been warned by some friends who have used these things, the USB sticks get hot really fast. It is okay though. They are tested to run that hot.

On a busy day my bandwidth usage is about 65-70mb. Primarily using SSH to connect to servers and a lot of page reloads while I'm developing.