Kryptronic Software Support Forum

I would like an affiliate module or feature that would process affiliate payments thru Authorize.net AIM or SIM solution at the time of an order on a website.  The way I would like it to work is the module would process an affiliate payment thru Authorize.net with a set percentage (whatever the admin wants it to be) of the order before shipping and tax.

So affiliates would automatically be paid at the time of any order.

The process would work something like this.

Customer completes shopping and procedes to checkout.  Enter his CC info. Upon submitting payment the store would do two things.

1. Calculate affiliate payment and process thru AIM.  For example 10% of order. Payment would go directly to the affiliates Authorize.net account.

2. Remaining 90% along with shipping and tax would be processed thru the store owners Authorize.net account.

I would like this module to basically allow the paying of two separate Auth.net accounts at the time of checkout. So it could be an entity that was not necessarily an affiliate but a partner in an e-commerce store. The admin area would have to allow for the setup of two Auth.net accounts and the admin would need the ability to choose which accounts did payment processing that included the shipping and tax fees and another account that just got a percentage of the total sale of goods.

The benefits is that the store owner would never actually have to pay by check an affiliate or store partner, but the process would be automated thru the checkout system.

Is this possible?

Potential problems I see are affiliate income would have to be great enough to warrant the doubling of Authnet fees.  Since your basically processing the order in two parts.

The other problem is with returns.  However, these are problems I am willing to work around. Why?

This feature would only be viable on sites that process larger orders in price, such as $50 or more.  So if the affiliate is making 10% of $50 he would get $5 processed thru his Auth.net account which would also subtract a transaction fee.  So the affiliate needs to make enough to at least cover the cost of the transaction fee and then some.  Benefit is the affiliate makes money at the time of the order and doesn't have to wait to get paid!  Seems like an awesome selling point to generate affiliate interest!

Returns are a problem in any e-commerce environment and require the store owner to get involved with the customer anyway.  Usually there is a restocking fee which could be substantial enough to cover affiliate revenue anyway.   So if the affiliate is making 10% of an item... the store owner could charge a 20% restocking fee plus shipping costs.  Thus covering the affiliate costs and then some.  So affiliates would not need to be penalized when an item is returned.

This system would seem to generate a ton of affilate interest because of the immediate payment prospects and the affiliate always makes money even if an item is returned!

Thoughts?