Connecting sites to online payment in Ukraine

Many have already encountered, and many have yet to face connecting their projects to online payment. In this article I will share my experience in this area.
The post does not contain unique information, everything described here can, if desired, be found in other sources. Nevertheless, reading this article is likely to save you a lot of time in the future, as well as tell you about the many little things and opportunities, the existence of which you may not even suspect.

And so for a start, let's consider what methods of online payment exist in principle:

• SMS
• Bank cards
• Banking Payment Systems (PayPal)
• Non-bank payment systems (Webmoney, BitCoin)
• Cash terminals

In Ukraine, they are all represented in one way or another. In particular, non-bank payment systems are the absolute leader Webmoney, although its prevalence is significantly inferior to Visa / Mastercard, from banking attention certainly worth Privat24 ...

And so back directly to receive payments. When you connect the payment, we have 2 options:

• Connect all possible payment systems through the aggregator
• Connect each payment system separately

Aggregators

At first glance, the aggregator seems to be an extremely attractive offer: you need to install only 1 script, enter into only 1 contract, or even work without it, do not bother with the choice of payment systems, because the aggregator did everything for you.
In reality, everything is a little different. Looking at these advantages, we forget about the disadvantages.
First, connecting the aggregator, we overpay. At best, you will have to pay 3% of the amount paid.
Secondly, an extra element is created in the payment chain, which, on the one hand, potentially reduces the number of users who complete the buying process, and on the other, creates an additional point of failure.
Thirdly, all aggregators in one form or another have limitations on the amounts and terms of withdrawal of funds.
Also, to connect Webmoney payment, you still have to get a personal passport and tie your wallet to the system.
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If all of the above doesn’t scare you, I can recommend Interkas , as a very good aggregator for Ukraine, with an instant connection and a 3% commission.

SMS

Otherwise, we continue consideration. Let's start with payment via SMS, here are its characteristic features:

• Suitable only for inexpensive goods / services (<20 UAH)
• High commission 50-64%
• Available to almost everyone
• Few ready modules for CMS

Immediately I anticipate questions like: “On website X, they write a commission of 55%, and you say that less than 60% does not happen.” So, 99% of SMS sites aggregators write% of the cost of SMS without VAT. Those. Percentage of the real value is 1.2 times lower.
We now turn to the steps necessary to connect such a payment:
First we need to choose a partner to receive payment. We will not consider the option of opening your short number, it will be a little expensive. Nevertheless, few people know that there are 2 types of SMS aggregators:
The first one takes a higher% of the commission, but provides prefixes on short numbers for free. With such an aggregator you will receive an average of 36 kopecks per SMS with the cost of 1 UAH. Most of these aggregators and you can easily find the right one in the search.
But there is also a second type, in which there is a monthly fee of about 100 UAH / month for 1 prefix on 1 number, but the average% increases from 36 to 40 kopecks from 1 UAH, which can be very profitable on large volumes. Of the second type aggregators, I only know Alpha-SMS , unfortunately they work only under a contract and only with legal entities.

Webmoney

Let us proceed to the consideration of non-bank payment systems. I don’t see any sense in connecting anything other than Webmoney in Ukraine, since the share of users of other systems is seeking IE6’s share in the browser market. The characteristic features of Webmoney are as follows:

• Any amount of payment
• Minimum commission
• Low availability (Alas, among users of UAnet, the share of WM owners is small)
• Availability of modules for most CMS

And so, what do we need to connect the payment?
In case you are an individual, you will need a Personal (25-30WMZ) or Initial (2-5WMZ) certificate in the system.
The initial certificate is obtained from the personalizer , it is 5-10 times cheaper than the Personal one, but it imposes significant restrictions on the amount of payment acceptance, namely:

type of wm-currency	in a day	in Week	per month
WMR	5000	15,000	30,000
WMZ	200	500	1000
WME	140	375	750
WMU	1500	4,000	8,000
WMB	100,000	300,000	600,000
WMG	50	150	300

The personal certificate is obtained from the Registrars , it costs more and has no such restrictions.
WMU can be withdrawn without additional fees (except for the standard 0.8%) using the card withdrawal service, for example, Delta or Platinum Bank, which have no fees for cashless crediting of funds as well as free withdrawals from the Atmosfera ATM network.

What about legal entities? For those who work on the general taxation system , you will also need to obtain a Personal Certificate for a responsible employee (certificates for legal entities are not issued), and then enter into an agreement with the Ukrainian Guarantee Agency. As a result, the money will go to your wallet, from where you can at any time withdraw it to your current account minus the system commission - 0.8%.
If you are working on a simplified taxation system , then by law you are not allowed to accept payment in a form other than cash, therefore you will need to conclude an agreement with the same Ukrainian Guarantee Agency on accepting payments without a Webmoney wallet directly to your current account. The commission in this case will be 2%.

Payment terminals

Characteristic features of the terminals are:

• Any amount of payment
• High availability
• Relatively high comm (3-5%)
• The difficulty of connecting without aggregators
• Lack of modules under CMS

At first glance, it does not look very rosy. However, not many people know that it is also possible to accept payment through Privatbank terminals, which have a low (from 1%) commission, are very easy to connect for payment, and in terms of prevalence they are not inferior to other terminal networks. Connection of such terminals is carried out through acquiring liqpay for individuals and Internet-acquiring of Privatbank for legal entities. We will talk about this below, as part of the discussion of acquiring payment cards, since both services are closely interrelated.

Payment cards for individuals

And so finally we reached the most common payment method on the Internet - payment cards.
For individuals, the only and non-alternative payment acceptance options is the Privatbank liqpay system.
The system has a number of restrictions, namely, accepting cards only from CIS banks, as well as acceptance limits not exceeding $ 250 (or equivalent in another currency) for a one-time payment from the card and no more than $ 500 / month for 1 card.
The maximum amount available for withdrawal in cash is $ 50,000 / month.
From other things:
- inconvenient verification system with SMS password (not to be confused with 3D-secure / SecureCode)
- if the user has not paid with this card through the system before, the payment can be verified up to a day, but I have not noticed this in practice for a long time.
You can also connect the payment through the terminals of Privatbank. But here I will make a small remark, after the introduction of the new payment interface, the choice of payment through the terminals was made so obscure that it is worth choosing the payment method (card or terminal) at the site interface and not providing the acquiring interface.
After payment, the money in full gets into your virtual account in the liqpay system, from where you can either spend it on replenishing your mobile, send it to another system user, or put it on a card (that's what the commission is at this stage).
The commissions and limits for withdrawing to the Privatbank card are rather gloomy, so consider the option with the Privat card.
Option one, simple:

• We open the free Universal card
• We withdraw money to her $ 0.55 + $ 0.5
• We pay in a retail network or we withdraw at any ATM (commission 1%)

Total we have when withdrawing to cash $ 0.55 + 1,495%

Option two, complex, relevant at speeds from 8400grn / month

• Open a GOLD debit card (service 80 UAH / month)
• We withdraw money to her $ 0.55 + $ 0.5
• We transfer money by payment on account details account or card of another bank (for example, Delta or Platinum) 3 UAH
• Cash withdrawal at ATM - 0 UAH

Total we have when withdrawing to cash $ 0.55 + 0.5% + 3 UAH + 80 UAH / month

Payment cards for legal entities

For legal entities, the situation is a bit more rosy, but the choice of banks that provide Internet acquiring is also small:

Bank	Commission
Privatbank	1-3.5%
Ukreximbank	4-5%
Raiffeisen	Individually
FUIB	2-2.5%
Finance and Credit	3% + 1200 UAH connection
Pivdenny	2-3%
Alfa Bank	Individually

From personal experience, when the company in which I work for one of my projects involved acquiring, we received refusals from everyone except Privat and Pivdenny. Our banks are very afraid to connect Internet acquiring for projects that do not sell anything clearly tangible and preferably within the country. It took about 2 weeks to wait for answers from banks and agree on conditions with Pivdenny.

You can certainly do the same and spend a few weeks on approvals and waivers, but I can not help but notice the unique conditions of Privatbank. They connect everyone in real time after making a public offer. All you have to do is to register on the site, accept the offer and specify the details for the transfer of funds. Moreover, about half of the cards in Ukraine were issued by Privatbank, which means that the% of cards on which you will pay less than the commission for acquiring are very high.
Of the minuses, you can call not very high initial limits:
- 400 thousand UAH / month, in total on all payments
- $ 10 thousand / month on 1 map
as well as the same inconvenient payment system with SMS password (not to be confused with 3D-secure / SecureCode).

As for the tariffs for Acquiring, they are as follows:

Payment	to PrivatBank account / card *	to the account of countries ua / ru **
from PrivatBank card	one%	1.5%
from other cards	3%	3.5%
cash (e-commerce cash)	one%	one%

* Funds are transferred automatically to the card / account minus the commission.
** Funds are credited within the 1st banking day.

And what about Privat24?

99% of Privat24 users have Privatbank cards, so you can safely leave only the acquiring cards and not connect Privat24.

But what about the description of the API and the connection process?

All APIs are available on the sites of payment systems, and the connection process from opening the first page of the documentation to the beginning of payment acceptance will take you no more than an hour. Therefore, I see no reason to dwell on it separately.

A little personal experience last

I have my own small project, rather a hobby. The cost of the service is 1.5 / 3 UAH, so SMS payment is also a fairly acceptable option. Webmoney / sms / cards / terminals are connected
It took 3 hours to connect in total, of which cards / terminals and webmoney took 45 minutes each, SMS took 1.5 hours, mainly because of the length of the process of connecting the necessary prefixes to short numbers and also agreeing on the text of the SMS cost on the site.
Payment ratio
- Maps 60%
- SMS 30%
- Webmoney 10%
- Terminals - 1 payment for all time

Thank you for attention.

UPD. Was inaccurate in terminology, in the context of the article:
Individuals - ordinary citizens, not entrepreneurs.
Legal entities - company + FLP.