Setup Paypal micropayments account

[jbuck]

I volunteered as tribute to figure out the process of creating a new Paypal account with our micropayments fee structure.

[jbuck]

Current status: We've created a Paypal account and we're waiting for Ann @ Paypal to link it to our existing account. Once that's done we'll be able to generate credentials that our platform can use.

We need to implement logic in our platform to use either account depending on the total transaction cost.

[valianttry]

I'd vote for prioritizing this in advance of our big traffic uptick expected from snippet % increase to 50% happening on Dec 1
For reference we lose about $500 - $800/day currently at 25% snippet traffic, which will double as of Dec 1

[jbuck]

Current status: I cannot create API credentials for the micro payments account because I've triggered an unpassable security check, and there's no way to add my personal phone number to the list of allowed phone numbers. Paypal recommended that I try again tomorrow and if that fails then delete the account and recreate it.

[jbuck]

Okay, I've created a new Paypal account and successfully created API credentials. Ann will need to do a few approval steps on her side, but we're making progress!

[adamlofting]

Given where we are in the campaign, is this switch now adding more risk that savings?

[jbuck]

I've done some more work on this today. I found a table of fees for various rates, now the only problem is figuring out a heuristic for which account to use based on the country of the donor, which I don't actually know so I need to guess...

[jbuck]

I am not going to be able to get this done before the holidays begin, but I wanted to document what I learned.

First of all, we currently have two rates with our existing (I'll call it "macro") account:

• Domestic Payments Rate: Nonprofit 2.2% + $0.30 USD
  • This only applies when the sender's account is registered in the US and they send a payment in USD
• International Payments Rate: Nonprofit < $100,000 monthly 3.2% + currency-specific fixed fee
  • This applies for every other kind of payment including USD payments send from anywhere else in the world, and all non-USD currencies
  • Fixed fees:
    • AUD: 0.30
    • BRL: 0.60
    • CAD: 0.30
    • CZK: 10.00
    • DKK: 2.60
    • EUR: 0.35
    • HKD: 2.35
    • HUF: 90
    • ILS: 1.20
    • JPY: 40
    • MXN: 4.00
    • NZD: 0.45
    • NOK: 2.80
    • PHP: 15.00
    • PLN: 1.35
    • RUB: 10
    • SGD: 0.50
    • SEK: 3.25
    • CHF: 0.55
    • TWD: 10.00
    • THB: 11.00
    • GBP: 0.20
    • USD: 0.30

With our new micro payments account we again have two rates:

• Domestic Micro Payments Rate: 5% + $0.05 USD
  • This only applies when the sender's account is registered in the US and they send a payment in USD
• International Micro Payments Rate: 6% + currency-specific fixed fee
  • This applies for every other kind of payment including USD payments send from anywhere else in the world, and all non-USD currencies
  • Fixed fees:
    • AUD: 0.05
    • BRL: 0.10
    • CAD: 0.05
    • CZK: 1.67
    • DKK: 0.43
    • EUR: 0.05
    • HKD: 0.39
    • HUF: 15
    • ILS: 0.20
    • JPY: 7
    • MXN: 0.55
    • NZD: 0.08
    • NOK: 0.47
    • PHP: 2.50
    • PLN: 0.23
    • RUB: 2
    • SGD: 0.08
    • SEK: 0.54
    • CHF: 0.09
    • TWD: 2.00
    • THB: 1.80
    • GBP: 0.05
    • USD: 0.05

After calculating the fee amount you'll need to round it to the nearest significant digit. In the case of currencies that have cents, that means you'll round it to the nearest cent. In the case of currencies without cents (like JPY) you'll round it to the nearest yen amount.

Sample fee calculations (only for current macro account):

amount	currency	country_code	fee_amount
$10.00	USD	US	-$0.52
$10.00	USD	AU	-$0.62
$25.00	USD	GB	-$1.10
$15.00	USD	CA	-$0.78
$5.00	USD	US	-$0.41
$10.00	AUD	AU	-$0.72
$20.00	USD	US	-$0.74
$15.00	EUR	DE	-$0.83
$3.00	USD	US	-$0.37
$15.00	USD	IE	-$0.78
$20.00	USD	US	-$0.74
$20.00	USD	AU	-$0.94
$20.00	USD	AU	-$0.94
$5.00	CAD	CA	-$0.46
$5.00	USD	US	-$0.41
$5.00	EUR	DE	-$0.51
$3.00	USD	AU	-$0.40
$3.00	EUR	DE	-$0.45
$800.00	JPY	JP	-$66.00
$5,000.00	JPY	JP	-$200.00

Holy background information batman! I'll do a new comment for the implementation.

[jbuck]

Okay, so, implementation. For non-USD currencies this is actually pretty easy: calculate the fee amount for the International Macro Payments and International Micro Payments and route the payment through whichever one is lower. For USD this is not as easy because we don't know whether we'll be paying the domestic rate or the international rate until we've actually completed the payment. I don't yet have a good idea for how to handle this problem...

[jbuck]

I ran through the math with Steph & Scott and we came to the conclusion that you can simply use the International payment rates table to calculate whether the macro account or the micro account has a better fee or not.

[ScottDowne]

cc @cadecairos as I may be needing your help on this.

[cadecairos]

Is the goal here to set up donate with two PP accounts and choose one based on the details of the giver?

[ScottDowne]

Moving this to MozillaFoundation/Advocacy#367