From: dunnett@mala.bc.ca
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2000 9:33 AM
To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject: Re: Credit card processing on VMS

In article <38CDE3B5.EA1A3205@vl.videotron.ca>,
     JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vl.videotron.ca> writes:
> While it is easy to get e-business web site on VMS for order entry by
> customers, I am curious how common is actual automated credit card processing ?
> 
> -do banks give out the checksum formula to vendors so that they can do basic
> checking for typing errors ? ( I used to have it, and lost it , arghhhh !)
> 
   I think this is fairly common knowledge. I use some JavaScript code
(which I found on a website somewhere) to validate credit cards:


/*  ================================================================
    FUNCTION:  isCreditCard(st)
 
    INPUT:     st - a string representing a credit card number

    RETURNS:  true, if the credit card number passes the Luhn Mod-10
		    test.
	      false, otherwise
    ================================================================ */

function isCreditCard(st) {
  // Encoding only works on cards with less than 19 digits
  if (st.length > 19)
    return (false);

  sum = 0; mul = 1; l = st.length;
  for (i = 0; i < l; i++) {
    digit = st.substring(l-i-1,l-i);
    tproduct = parseInt(digit ,10)*mul;
    if (tproduct >= 10)
      sum += (tproduct % 10) + 1;
    else
      sum += tproduct;
    if (mul == 1)
      mul++;
    else
      mul--;
  }

  if ((sum % 10) == 0)
    return (true);
  else
    return (false);

} // END FUNCTION isCreditCard()

> -do banks allow small business to transmit transactions for
> authorisation/processing ? Or only large businesses allowed to send
> transactions from their own computers direct to the bank ?
> 
   I can only say what the Royal Bank allows ( as that's who we use ) but
I presume they are all pretty similar. The bank supports a couple of different
PC programs which can be used to transmit transactions, either singly or
in a batch. These programs essentially just implement in software the
same functions done by a "transselect" machine. You still use a dialup
connection to contact the bank. I think for higher volumes they offer
an X.25 (Datapac) option as well.

> Is there software on VMS for the above ?

 I don't believe they support any VMS software for this. In our case we
gather the transactions on a VMS system, produce a batch file from them and
use a PC to transmit the batch ( using a Pathworks share to access the
batch file from a PC ).

 The other option they offered us was service bureaus which would process
our transactions for us. The way this works is we would gather the 
relevant credit card information on our own web page but the "action"
URL for the form points to the service bureau - they validate the
transaction in real time and return the results. We didn't go this route
as there's a monthly minimum charge for this service and our volumes
didn't justify it.