The Alipay Test Customer can be used to put (free) test transactions though. Which lets you verify that the website’s Alipay payment gateway has been set-up and is working correctly.
Overview
Although you can create the Alipay Test Customer from the website’s front end (by registering that customer when placing their first test order) it’s more straightforward to create them from the WordPress Admin section. On this page, we’ll describe how to do it this way.
Note! The reasons why setting up the Alipay Test Customer properly and carefully is so important, are:-
- This customer can create orders for real products and services from your store,
- Those orders will appear to be real orders that have been paid for in full. And which now need to be shipped/supplied to the customer.
- However, unlike real orders, these orders have NOT been paid for.
So unless you set up the Alipay Test Customer carefully, it will be very easy for store staff to miss the fact that the orders they place are fake. And to process (and for example, ship), the goods, as per normal.
The Alipay Test Customer we’re creating is a WooCommerce Customer. And WooCommerce Customers are standard WordPress Users – with additional fields (like Billing Address and Shipping Address,) needed by WooCommerce.
So first…
Create a Base WordPress User
- Log into the WordPress Admin section – as an Adminstrator
- Select “Users” » “Add New“
Then, in the screen that appears, fill in the fields as follows:-
Username: Ideally you want a long and totally random username – that is very hard to guess. And which is, at the very least, unique to your site.
This is to prevent knowledgeable customers from guessing that username (and password). And then:-
- Logging in with them,
- Having some goods sent to a delivery address they set on the order form, and then;
- Going to Alipay to pay NOTHING for those goods.
And if a few days later that customer deletes their account (and all it’s orders), you’ll probably have a hard time tracking them down. (And may not even notice/know that you’ve been swindled.)
But long, random usernames and passwords aren’t easy to remember or type in. As a compromise, a username/password that’s some very long phrase or quotation could be used. For example:-
- “nothing-is-permanent-but-change”
- “if-music-be-the-food-of-love-play-on”
- etc, etc
Though reasonably long and hard to guess, they can still be typed in quickly enough. And if in addition you:-
- Add a plugin to your site – like eg; Login Lockdown – that effectively prevents users from trying combinations relentlessly until they strike the jackpot, and;
- Have “Allow One Cent Test Transactions?” DISABLED when you’re not actually using them,
then the chance that you’ll be tricked this way become very low.
E-mail: Should be a real email address that you have access to. But NOT alipay_test@alipay.com.
First Name: Something that clearly identifies this customer (and the orders they create) as dummy test orders. Eg: Alipay Test Customer.
Last Name: As for the First Name. Eg; Dummy Test Order. If the suggested first and last names are used, for example, then the customer name that appears on orders will be “Alipay Test Customer Dummy Test Order“. Which should increase the chance that store staff will notice that the order is fake (and not to be processed further).
Website: Not required (but you can enter one if you want).
Password: As for the username. Something as long, random and hard to guess as possible.
Send Password?: It’s probably a good idea to say “yes”.
Role: Select “Customer” from the dropdown.
Then press “Add New User“. The new user will be added – and you will be returned to the “Users” listing screen.
Fill in the User’s WooCommerce Details
Now “edit” the User you have just added. You’ll see that additional information blocks have been added to the User editing screen. You can ignore all of these except “Customer Billing Address” and “Customer Shipping Address“. These should be filled out as follows:-
Customer Billing Address » Email: Set this to alipay_test@alipay.com
The remaining Customer Billing Address and Customer Shipping Address fields: Set these to the website’s real live shipping address. That way, if store staff don’t notice that the order is fake, then at least any goods shipped should come back.
And that’s that! Your Alipay Test Customer is now ready to test the payment gateway…
