SCOPING: support for participant compensation - direct payments

[becky-gilbert]

Summary

Having researchers provide an e-gift card as compensation is not always ideal. One option is to provide 'points' for participation, which families could choose to redeem for things that we provide/facilitate (see #137), though that option would also require some admin overhead for managing the purchases/requests. So another option would be to support compensation as a bank transfer/deposit.

Implementation

Payment provider:

• Stripe
• Paypal
• Square

Database:

• New table for storing every transaction: payment processor ID, user ID, amount, success/failure status
• New table for storing each compensation amount granted from researchers, which could be used to calculate the family's total account balance: study ID, response ID, child ID, amount, approving researcher ID, paid/unpaid status (or amount)

Views:

• Family-facing: balance, payment processing, payment history
• Researcher-facing: compensation page

Issues/limitations

Do these providers support international payments? What about currency conversion charges?

Charges per transfer:

• Stripe/Square: 2.9% + 30¢, International cards cost an additional 1.5%, currency conversion adds 1%
• Paypal:

Is there a way to minimize these charges? E.g. by having a running balance per family, which they can redeem when it reaches a certain amount?