Online financial transactions

[wheezle]

My boss has been telling me for ages that I "must learn how to do online credit card stuff" (his esteemed words).
I would certainly like to do this (for my own education), but from my searching it seems like it would be a fairly costly thing to do on my own.

Services like Camtech (http://www.camtech.com.au/default.htm) require a dedicated server (from what I can gather) ...and at present my boss has sites on $100 hosting packages.

So I guess I was wondering about a couple of things... primarily, if anyone on ZGeek has experience working with/implementing this sort of service, and if so how did you learn how to do that?

I'm a proponent of self-education over learning through courses/institutions, but if anyone knows of courses which deal with this matter, I'd be interested to know about them. (I'm not totally against courses... I covet come of those Cisco certifications so much... just gotta save up a large wad of cash)

And also, I was wondering how you go about testing the transactions? At present I don't even have a credit card of my own.

Anyway, any input would be appreciated.

[btwong]

join up with paypal or something. They give you testing scripts/card numbers/forms etc that will cover all bases. You should be able to test the whole proceedure. Once it is working in the test environment, it should work exactly the same when you make it "Live"

Make sure you test all possible outcomes.

In fact alot of banks have this sort of service available if you ask (i am currently developing a Westpac one). They usually use SOAP or XML to pass data, as well as a registered DLL so when you send data, they know you are a legit customer, and not someone hacking into the system.

[wheezle]

I guess all the direct-payment API's are different so it's a matter of hoping that there's good documentation.

My main obstacle is that my boss expects me to go off and figure it out, despite my constant pleas that that would require me to pay for these services (which I couldn't justify in the name of education).

How well documented is the Westpac back-end ? (or did I misinterpret you, and you are in fact developing the back end?)

[Enthalpy]

While you don't need a dedicated server, if your boss isn't willing to shell out for a static IP (needed by SSL) and an SSL certificate then none of the banks will touch you anyway and it's best to stick with a service like paypal (extensive documentation + sandbox test area).

If you want to play with an API check out eWay. They support most of the major banks. You won't be able to actively test without signing up, but it'll give you an idea.. they have sample scripts in many major languages and it's damn easy to get running.

HTH