Designing a custom payment system for a monthly membership scheduling website.

[ejarnutowski]

Hi all,

 

Background on me:

I'm a 2 year PHP/MySQL developer and I've written a few applications for scheduling, directories, and I've worked with shopping cart platforms like Zencart and Pinnacle so I have a good amount of know how regarding these languages.

 

What I'm trying to accomplish:

I have an application that I completed and now I'd like to integrate a custom payment system and charge monthly for a membership.  I would like to offer reoccuring monthly payments or a yearly payment to the customers.  I have a merchant account and a real-time payment gateway(not paypay or another processor). What is the best way to go about creating a payment system like this that doesn't feel like it's taken from a shopping cart platform like zencart or pinnacle.  Many "Software as a Service" websites like istockphoto.com use this.  Please let me know if there are platforms to build off of or if I need to develop it from the ground up myself.  If from the ground up, do you have any tips where I should start researching the process?

 

Basically, how/where do I acquire the guts of the custom payment system like this where I can manipulate the code and build it into my site?

 

Thank you!

 

Elliott