I am building a freelance website for my local area but don't know how to impliment a payment system. The process goes like this... 1. Buyer posts a project. 2. Freelancers bid on a project. 3. Buyer chooses a bidder and pays. 4. Payment is held until freelancer has finished the job. 5. Payment is released to the freelancer. How could I create a system like this? Idealy I would like each user to have an account in which they can add funds, withdraw, pay etc. Although I understand security would be a massive issue. Any ideas? thanks.
Actually, it's easy enough. All you need to do first - select payment gateway(s). Then refer to payment gateway documentation (especially callbacks section) to discover how you can assign specific orders to correct accounts. So when user submits his payment, your system recognizes whom this payment belongs to and credits correct account. Functions like payment release are not related to payment gateway and you will need to make them yourself.
Ok so much research is needed. I will finish designing the site first then I will impliment this after, At least I know now that it can be done. thanks.
No, it's not that easy. The programming is the easy part. You cannot accept payment for another entity, subtract your fee, and then pay them. This is called aggregating, and is specifically prohibited by Visa/MC. They will shut you down as soon as they find out about it. If you have the money, you can register as an aggregator, but it's very expensive. Paypal has announced that they are going to allow aggregating through their new development platform, but so far it's not publicly available.