I have written a credit card application and use Echo's electronic clearing house as my gateway. It appears that Intuit has recently acquired Echo, and the Echo website is changing a little. Anyway, Echo provided me with a perl module that I can call into my perl shopping car and pass credit card infomation to the Echo gateway. The advantage of a credit card gateway is that you can have your store open for business 24 hours a day, and the shopping cart captures all the information needed to fill orders and bill customer credit cards.
On the down side I was required to open an account with a bank out of California, where all income from customer's credit card charges are deposited. I can withdraw funds from my account with the California bank by check five or six time per month. Also, Echo provides merchant accounts and shopping cart software themselves, or through their affiliates, and Echo is very aggressive in trying to switch customer who have their own websites and shopping cart software over to their stuff. I capture all credit card transactions to a postgreSQL database, and use directNIC to certify my identity and for SSL encryption. I am allowed to maintain credit card numbers in transactions save to my PostgreSQL databases, but it is illegal to retain the PII, (eg Personal Identity Information number), which I pass to the Echo gateway to verify credit cards, but do not capture anywhere in my system. The initial transaction is submitted to authorize a transaction. If the authorization completes, I can deposit the authorization to my bank in California with a few button clicks, once items are shipped and/or electronically delivered. http://www.echo-inc.com/payment_gateway.html Below is a link about PCI DSS compliance, (eg Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_DSS Regards, LelandJ Paul McNett wrote: > Kenneth Kixmoeller/fh wrote: > >> Advice, real-world experience (and the usual WAGs) appreciated. >> > > Back in 1996-1998 I successfully used VISANET for a client, for a web app and > for a > desktop app (same merchant number in each). > > They had published API's back then, so I'd hope they haven't screwed it up > since then! > > Paul > > > [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
