Offsite payment options for s2Member site

#1

Hi.

I am currently exploring s2Member as a possible fit for my project. Of particular interest are payment options. The default options (PayPal etc.) are not suitable for my users. I can set up a payment page for each membership option on a third-party payment site. All I need to make this work is to provide links to the appropriate payment page for each membership option.

I can configure the payment page to redirect to my site once payment is made. It makes sense to redirect to the default s2Member registration form. Can this be done? Also, can membership be auto-activated for the user as soon as payment is made?

#2

At the moment, it sounds like you are going to be making things unnecessarily complex. If you use s2Member Pro, you can have members register, pay (e.g. with Stripe or PayPal) and login immediately all in one go on-site. Why would you want to reinvent the wheel?

#3

That’s the point really. My users can’t use Stripe. Most can’t use Paypal. A local alternative is the the only real solution. There is no direct integration at the moment. They however offer “payment pages” which can be setup for each membership plan, and support recurrent payments.

#4

I see. Depending on what payment processor you need to use, you could be better off simply paying someone to build the integration. There are one or two people here who do such work.

If you still want to do it your way, then this is what I’d do. Take the payments as you suggest, and also take any other details at the same time that you want them to have on the WP site. This means that they won’t have to register again. Then use either s2Member Pro’s API or WP’s own REST API to send the details of each registration to the WP site. These details should include the level or ccap that you are assigning to them.

After successful payment, I would redirect each new member to the password reset page on the WP site so that they can then enter their email address and have the password-setting instructions emailed to them. Then they will be able to login.

You will, of course, also need to figure out how to handle renewals.

There is, however, a third way that you could use if your payment processor is supported by WooCommerce. Then you could use the WooCommerce Role-O-Matic plugin to enable people to sign up directly on the WP site and be given an s2Member role. WooCommerce Role-O-Matic should also be able to handle renewals. I don’t know if there’s a way to automatically login someone after purchase, but WooCommerce has plenty of hooks so I would guess that it is.

#5

Many thanks, Tim, for your insights. I’ll chew on these a bit before making a decision.