buying credits with € and then spending them

-- HikaShop version -- : 2.3.2
-- Joomla version -- : 3.3.3

Hi!

I have quit a special problem. I want to achieve something like Fotolia.com with HikaShop Business. Thething I want to achieve is:

- users buy credits (AUP or hika custom field points) with real money
-- the "products" are e.g. "10 credits", selling for 5€
-- only "5€" should be displayed as price
-- everything should be in € in the checkout process
-- the checkout needs to include a billing address
-- payment is done with Paypal

- users use these credits to buy virtual goods (downloads)
-- these products should only be displayed with their price in credits, no € here
-- the checkout process is different and does not include a billing address selection screen; shipping and payment are selected automatically

My question is, is this even possible?
I thought about either setting up two completely separate Joomla installations, one for buying credits and the other one for spending them, with shared user databases - but this seems like a very complicated option. Does any of you see another chance, maybe by using different views? But how can the checkout process be different then?

EDIT: Or is it possible to run two instances of Hikashop in one Joomla installation - one to buy credits (with €) and one to sell downloads (with credits)?

Thank you so much!!

Cheers, Lukas

I have not tested this nor do I own (or have even used) the Alphauserpoints www.hikashop.com/support/documentation/8...userpoints-form.html component but this is how I would do it. (Note I have linked to the alphauserpoints page but this can be substituted with hika user points)

-Create a category called credits or something like that
-Create products in this category for the credits (10 credits for 5 euro, 20 for 10 euro, ect)
-Set up the rate per-product in Alphauserpoints (see "Point Earning Options" here )
-Create a new currency (system>currencies>new) and name it "Credits"
-Create your payment option, lets say for example you want the user to pay for the points by paypal. Go to system>payment methods>new. Make sure to fill out all the necessary info. Near the bottom right there is a check box labeled "Restrictions" click it. A few options will show up, in the currencies field select euro (this is so that users can only pay for credits by paypal and not the products)

-Create another category named Products and create all your virtual products in there
-Make sure to set the currency to the "Credit" currency we created earlier
-Make a new alphauserpoints payment options following the steps here
-Make sure to set the currency restriction to "Credits"

From here you will have 2 categories: 1 with virtual products for credits the other with credits for euros. Set up 2 pages for these categories to separate them.

PROBLEMS:
The virtual goods checkout will still have to include a billing address screen. This hopefully wouldnt be too much of a problem because the user would have their address remembered from when they bought the credits.

Hope this helps.

Thank you very much for the answer!! It helped tremendously, and I think it's the right way to do it.

Nevertheless, I ran into two problems:

- even though I set the payment restriction for the two payment methods, I only see "pay with credits"
- the products for buing credits have their price set to €, but they still get converted into the shop's main currency

Any further ideas would be extremely helpful.

Thank you!!

Cheers,

Lukas

It seems like hikashop is automatically changing prices from euros to your default currency "Credits" which would make sense if you had a normal store but you don't. This is the reason why you only see "pay with credits", I believe hikashop is converting the euro prices to credits! Heres how to get around this:

-Remove the currency restrictions from both shipping methods
-Set the weight for all your Credit products to 0g
-Set the weight for all your digital products to 1000g (just to be sure)
-Set the restrictions for the pay with euros payment method to maximum weight 1g
-Set the restrictions for the pay with credits payment method to minimum weight 100g
This way the credits will always weigh less than 1g so they will always get the euro payment method and the virtual products will always weigh more than 100g so they will always get the "pay with credits" method

As for products having their prices set to euro I think you will have to edit the view "product / listing_price.php", unfortunately I don't know enough about php to help you there.

thank you so much, you both were of tremendous help!

I'll work with that and see what I can achieve, I will post my results here for others as reference when I have a proper solution - most probably I'll code a module that'll switch the main currency depending on the products put into the cart.

Cheers, Lukas