note 52771 deleted from ref.pfpro by danbrown

Note Submitter: brian at sambizsys dot com ---- Here's a way to do recurring billing without needing to store credit card data, and without needing the recurring billing add-on service: 1. Enable reference transactions in VeriSign Manager 2. Generate the first "sale" transaction, or if the first payment will be in the future, generate a $1 "authorization" transaction to validate the card and generate a pnref. 3. Create a billing schedule in a database table, and store the pnref. 4. Create and run a daily CRON job which submits reference transactions for any transaction matching that day's billing date. The pnref in the reference transaction will allow the old card info to be used, even though you didn't store any card info. Optionally also store the card's expiration date, and make the CRON job smart enough not to submit transactions with expiration dates in the past. I suggest storing the user's pnref in a separate table (e.g., user_preferred_payment_method), and let the user easily update his/her preferred payment method at any time (new $1 auth to validate the new card and generate a new pnref). Reference transactions are a wonderful thing and let CRON take care of your recurring billing, without needing to store the card data or subscribe to additional features. Hope this is helpful to someone... Brian