You have a membership site or you’re thinking about starting one? You should definitely consider using Restrict Content Pro plugin. This is one of the best membership WordPress plugins out there.
And in this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to connect Braintree with RestrictContentPro.
Why use Braintree?
While you have the option to choose from a couple of other options to collect payments – including Stripe – if you’re in eastern Europe you should forget about Stripe. They still don’t have coverage. So, we’re left with 2Checkout, Authorize.net, PayPal, PayPal Express, PayPal Pro, and Braintree. From the other mentioned, Braintree is the easiest to use and has the nicest control panel.
OK, without further dragging this, let me show you how to set Braintree with Restrict Content Pro.
1) Create an Account and Get The API Credentials
First, of course, you should get the plugin itself. You can see all the benefits in the detailed RCP review.
Once Restrict Content Pro is installed, create an account with Braintree. You can do so from the following link, here.
Simply go through the process on their website:
After your account is approved – keep in mind that it might take a couple of days your application to be fully approved – you should go to the wheel on the top right > API:
On the next screen you can either create a new API or see the existing one by clicking view:
You need the following three things – these you will copy inside your Restrict Content Pro dashboard:
- Public Key
- Private Key
- Merchant ID
Now, access your WordPress dashboard. Go to your RCP panel > Payments > Enabled Gateways > Tick Braintree:
Then, paste the credentials in the corresponding fields:
Save your changes.
Still, it’s not over. You need also to do the following:
2) Create Your Plans Inside Your Restrict Content Pro And Inside Braintree
OK. The connection between our merchant and our plugin is done.
But we also need to set our payment plans.
Inside your Restrict Content Pro, go to Restrict > Membership levels > Add your payment levels:
Once you have them added, go back to your Braintree account. Click through the following steps:
Once you click on add New Plan, you will see that the requested info is similar to what you already added inside your WordPress dashboard.
The idea here is to add the same info as you just did above – inside your RCP dashboard.
You can see the ID of your membership levels once you hover over the name:
Keep in mind that you need to add the exact same info you previously added inside your RCP dashboard. Also, to update it if you make any updates inside your membership levels on a latter stage. This is really important if you want to make sure your connection between the two is uninterrupted.
Unfortunately, the above is not the final step.
And this is where it gets kind of complicated. Especially if you’re not a web guy.
Still, I’ll do my best to explain easily what you need to do.
3) Add your Webhooks
In short, Webhooks are how Restrict Content Pro communicates with Braintree and is the system RCP uses to detect when a subscription has been updated (payment made, account cancelled, etc.).
To add yours, go again to your Braintree account > the wheel > API again:
Next, go to Webhooks section on the top and click next to Create New Webhook:
Inside Destination URL (HTTPS only) you need to add the following:
https://example.com/index.php?listener=braintreeOf course, make sure to change example.com with your actual domain name. This is really important. Otherwise, the connection won’t work.
Before you click save, make sure to also tick the following boxes:
Click save now. The Webhood is now created and your Braintree is successfully set to work with your Restrict Content Pro.
4) Add CVV. 3D Security. Testing
We’re almost ready to collect payments and to make money with Restrict Content Pro.
Still, we need to attend a couple of extra things:
Enable CVV Authorization
An additional thing you should definitely consider enabling the CVV.
This basically means that people will be asked to also enter their credit card CVV before making a purchase. This will great to reduce fraudulent bills on your website. After all, you don’t want fraudsters to make purchases on your website because this will lead to chargebacks and unnecessary headaches.
To enable this, go to your Braintree account > Fraud Management > CVV > Options:
Enable this for all transactions.
Next is 3D security.
3D Secutity Handling
The 3D secure payments is enabled by default in your Restrict Content Pro plugin. This is also usually enabled by Braintree but you can ask the support just to be sure.
Don’t know what is 3D secure payment?
This is an extra step added by banks to ensure that the payment is legitimate. The process is simple: Before billing the card, the browser will direct the user to a place where they need to put a code that’s send to their smartphone.
You need to be sure this is working to take payments.
Testing Your Payments With Braintree
Before start marketing your membership website, make sure to test if everything is working properly.
To do so, Braintree offers a sandbox account. Basically, you can repeat the same process as above but in testing mode. If you want to do it, you can simply create an account here.
Personally, I did the following:
I just created an account from incognito browser using my credit card.
Go on your site and bill your card to see if everything is working. After all, the money will go back to you.
That’s it, now your website is successfully connected with Braintree and you now can collect payments.