eCommerce - about

eCommerce is shorthand for ‘electronic commerce’, which is the the buying and selling of goods or services over the internet. eCommerce is often narrowly used to refer to the retail online selling of physical products, but it also includes any type of financial transaction that takes place online.

What are the benefits ?

• overcomes geographical limits, giving you access to a more global market

• lowers costs

• enables unlimited hours of operation, accessible 24/7

How do online payment transactions flow ?

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How are funds transferred to your bank ?

1. Your customer submits the transaction to the Payment Gatway via a secure connection from your website through any of our products - GettaRoom, TransForm, or No-Contact Check-Out.

2. The Payment Gateway receives the transaction and passes it via a secure connection to your bank’s processor - a financial partner that provides credit card processing on behalf of the credit card brands (Visa, Master Card, American Express, etc).

3. Your bank’s processor submits the transaction to the Credit Card Interchange - a network of financial entities that manage the processing, clearing, and settlement of credit card transactions.

4. The Credit Card Interchange routes the transaction to your customer’s Credit Card Issuer.

5. The Credit Card Issuer approves or declines the transaction based on available funds and passes the transaction results - and if approved, the appropriate funds - back through the Credit Card Interchange.

6. The Credit Card Interchange relays the transaction results to your bank’s processor.

7. Your bank’s processor relays the transaction results to the Payment Gateway.

8. The Payment Gateway stores the transaction results and sends them to you and to your customer.

9. The Credit Card Interchange passes the appropriate funds for the transaction to your bank.

10. You bank then deposits the funds into your merchant bank account.

What do you need for eCommerce transactions ?

• Integration with a Payment Gateway

  • To learn which gateways we accommodate and their available functionality see https://b4checkin.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/BTD/pages/23789819

• An eCommerce Merchant ID (MID) and Credentials

  • Different gateways use different credentials. To learn what each Payment Gateway requires see payment gateways

Who creates the eCommerce Merchant ID (MID) ?

To order an eCommerce MID contact your processor (bank), which in some cases is also your Payment Gateway provider, who will then in turn create the eCommerce MID and pass the eCommerce MID and credentials back to you.

Once you have acquired your eCommerce Merchant ID (MID) you then have it ‘on-boarded’ by your Payment Gateway.

What is the Address Verification System (AVS) ?

The Address Verification Service (AVS) is an approval process provided by credit card processors and issuing banks to assist in detecting suspicious credit card transactions and preventing fraud. The Address Verification Service checks the billing address submitted by the card user against the billing address on the cardholder account at the issuing bank. This is done as part of the merchant's request for authorization of the credit card transaction. The credit card processor sends a response code back to the merchant indicating the degree of address matching, which determines if the transaction is approved or rejected.

How does b4 use the Address Verification System (AVS) ?

We pass the address entered by the card user along to your Payment Gateway. The Payment Gateway passes the address information along to the processor (bank). The processor (bank) then takes the provided address and credit card information and passes it along to the credit card provider (VISA, MasterCard, American Express, etc…). The credit card provider then passes these details to the Issuing bank (the cardholder's bank). The issuing bank (cardholder's bank) then matches the submitted information to the information they have on file for the actual cardholder. Based on what information does or does not match they will send back a corresponding letter code. The credit card provider will take this letter code and translate it to their letter code. The processor (bank) and Payment Gateway will do the same thing and pass us their code, which is the only code we see and care about. To see a list of the Gateway specific codes see https://b4checkin.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/BTD/pages/1500708959.

TLDR: We pass the address to the Payment Gateway and they provide us with an AVS code.

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How are these AVS codes used ?

AVS codes are used to determine if you want to accept a transaction or not, which can assist in mitigating credit card fraud. If you take another look at the https://b4checkin.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/BTD/pages/1500708959 you can determine which your gateway’s codes you want to allow. Any code that is not allowed will be flagged as an AVS failure, and your customer is advised that the payment has failed.

How does b4 identify an AVS failure and what do we do with them ?

When we receive an AVS failure we void the transaction according to the standard failure definitions used by your gateway. You can also arrange to customize how these codes are handled, if so desired.

1. For all Gateways except PXP and 3C
   If you wish deviations from the standard setup, you can advise your Payment Gateway which AVS codes you want considered as approved transactions and your gateway will set them up as you have specified.
   
   

2. For only PXP and 3C
   You must advise your Project Manager here at b4 which AVS codes you want considered as approved transactions, as must also configure these settings for you in our system. Any future changes to these settings must also be made at b4, which you can request at any time by emailing support@b4checkin.com to create a support ticket.