[ILUG] Connecting Trintech box to linux ?

[kevin lyda]

On Wed, Jun 21, 2000 at 04:07:22PM +0100, Dave Burke wrote:
> I'm working on a website for one of our sister companies at the moment,
> and we want to be able to do live credit card validation + payment on the
> website and to do it ourselves, i.e. not use a 3rd party like clickpay.

we do that here at itg.

the problem is that a) you need to implement a credit card terminal
(they do more than you think) and b) you need to get the bank to
certify your software.  if you decide to sidestep trintech and
do it yourself (that's what we did) you also need to do nightly
settlements (apacs 29b).

> I've been playing around with CCVS[0] for the last couple of days and it
> seems that the protocols that it supports[1] are not the ones we use in
> europe. We use APACS30 in europe according to the guy in AIB.

my understanding is that apacs30 is a british isles thing, not all the
way across europe.

> We have a couple of trintech boxes in the office and we noticed that they
> have RS232 ports on the back, does anyone know if it's possible to connect
> that into our server and allow it to handle credit card validation +
> payment and just pass back that it's done and is happy to proceed?

you should get a better idea of how it works.  for instance the credit
card terminals might be dialing into a third party who then passes the
request onto the trintech system via ip or x25.  or maybe the terminals
are getting auths direct from the bank and the trintech system is only
doing batch settlement.  (in fact i bet that's what's happening)

and then there are floor limits, reversals, oh the joy never ends.

the nice part about the whole thing for me is perl - the shifting
requirements and dealing with the subtlties of apacs 30 allow me to
tweak a bit faster than the equivalent c code (or worse yet that still
birth called c++).  ah...

all in all linux is more than capable of doing it.  if you top up your
speakeasy phone by laser or credit card, then you're a linux user -
linux is authing your card.  but the political issues of dealing with
banks are amazing.  i'm grateful for the service i get as a customer now
- i changed one letter in the settlement file name and was rewarded with
a week of testing.

crazy.

kevin
-- 
kevin at suberic.net       "we were goin' for breakfast.  in canada.  we
fork()'ed on 37058400    made a deal: if she'd stop hookin', i'd stop
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                                                   --porter, "payback"