WooCommerce Steem Payment Method Updates

I am sharing the most recent updates to the WooCommerce Steem Payment Method plugin.

This is the same plugin that is powering STEEM/SBD transactions on the Homesteaders Co-op website, a venue used by 28 vendors in 11 countries to accept STEEM/SBD. Additionally this plugin is used by at least 7 other websites to my knowledge to accept STEEM/SBD for payments.

Repository

Github: https://github.com/sagescrub/woocommerce-steem-payment-method

Wordpress / WooCommerce Plugin

Use this link to download/install this plugin in your WooCommerce store: https://wordpress.org/plugins/woo-steem-payment-method/

Introduction

This post is meant to serve as a recap of the highlights and updates that were made to the WooCommerce Steem Payment Method plugin since the initial Utopian announcement for this plugin.

WooCommerce Steem Payment Method

Latest Updates

Following are the changes to this plugin that have been made since the previous Utopian update on 15 Sept 2018.

Faster Transaction Matching

Some folks had mentioned it was taking a long time to match the steem transaction to the order payment. The CRON job was running every 5 minutes so it could take up to 10 minutes to match a transaction. Reduced the time of checking for matching transaction history from 5 minutes to 2 minutes, so it will now take up to 4 minutes for a valid payment to be matched to an order.

More Detailed Order Notes

Order Notes are more detailed including exchange rate between FIAT and STEEM/SBD, as well as payee, memo, transaction time. Additionally, detailed order notes are added when matching transaction is discovered on blockchain.

Customizable Transaction Memo

Added a filter to allow customizing the transaction memo. Requested by Hive account@thecryptodrive

Customizable Transaction Payee

Added a filter to allow customizing the transaction payee (steem account)

Admin Option to Show/Hide Discounted Prices

Added admin option to show discounted price in STEEM/SBD. If enabled products that are on sale will display the original price in STEEM/SBD with strike through. Discounted STEEM/SBD prices are now hidden by default.

Better API Error Handling

Added error handling for querying steem transfer history.

More Efficient Usage of Steemyy API

Adjusted querying steem transfer history via Steemyy to prevent unneeded/excessive usage of Hive account@justyy's excellent API.

Updated Readme files

The Readme files / Wordpress Plugin description were updated with more details to give users a better understanding of the requirements of this plugin as well as better understanding about how it is working under the hood.

Revived International Currency Rate Conversion

Revived international currency rates conversion using Exchange Rates API (exchangeratesapi.io). Previous version of this plugin (before I forked it) was using a fixer.io API that was no longer freely available. I transitioned this plugin to exchangeratesapi.io in order to revive currency rate conversion for international (non USD) websites.

Various Adjustments for Stability of Plugin

Various updates were made to fix bugs, error handling and migrate away from using deprecated functions.

Websites Using this Plugin

To my knowledge there are now at least 8 websites using this plugin to accept steem/sbd payments:

Homesteaders Co-op

Free community marketplace for sustainable goods and ethical services. A venue used by 28+ vendors in 11+ countries to accept STEEM/SBD. - Hive account@homesteaderscoop
https://homesteaderscoop.com

Future Plans

There are a few plans for improving this plugin in the future:

Multiple Exchanges

Currently we are using Poloniex for steem exchange rate conversions. In the future I would like to see this plugin have the ability to query multiple exchanges. Both for better price averages and also for redundancy in case connection to one exchange API is lost.

KeyChain

Currently Steem Payments are made via SteemConnect. I would like to explore the possibility of integrating KeyChain as an alternative payment method within this plugin. This would give the users more choice as to how to transact.

Subscriptions

Hive account@graylan and Hive account@techcoderx are exploring the possibility of updating this plugin to support WooCommerce subscription based products. This would allow the possibility of purchasing products with recurring payments.

Collaboration

I am open to collaboration on this plugin regarding the above enhancements or other improvements I have not listed here. Feel free to reach out to me if you are interested in the comments or via discord.