A Payment Service Provider (or 'PSP') is a third party company who specialise in taking credit/debit card payments online. Your online customers are passed to the server belonging to the PSP when they are ready to pay for their order. They enter their details into the PSP page, and then the PSP contacts their bank, validates the card and takes the payment. The PSP then passes the payment to you at a later time.
To add a PSP to your list of payment methods, go to 'Business Settings | Payment and Security', add a new row to the grid (see Selecting Your Online Payment Methods for details) and select a PSP from the list provided.
Note: You will need to have installed the 'PSPSetup.exe' program that came with your Actinic installation files in order for this to work. If you have any problems, try running this file.
When you select a PSP in the payment method grid, the 'Configure Method' button becomes active. Click the button to see the 'Payment Service Provider Configuration' window. The settings in this area vary depending on the services provided by your PSP. A complete list of the settings you might see is below:
|
Field |
Meaning |
|
Online Prompt |
The online name that will be shown to your customers during the checkout stage at your web site. This is the same as the 'Web Site Description' field in the main 'Payment and Security' tab. |
|
Provider |
A confirmation of the PSP name. |
|
Merchant ID |
Enter your ID as supplied by the PSP. Once you have registered with a PSP you will receive your merchant ID number. If you have not already registered you may do so by clicking the 'Information and Registration' button. Note: For PayPal, your Merchant ID is the email address you are registered at PayPal with. |
|
Security Key |
Enter your key as supplied by the PSP. Some PSPs don't require a key in order to operate in test mode. |
|
Confirm Key |
Confirm your key as supplied by the PSP. |
|
Run in production mode |
When you select this option, money starts changing hands. Select it only when you have run in test mode and are satisfied that your PSP connection is working accurately. Your PSP may require you to notify them when you wish to commence live transactions. |
|
Run in test mode |
No money changes hands in this mode. Your provider will usually offer this facility for test purposes and may provide dummy card numbers. Operating in 'test' mode means different things to different PSPs. There are 2 interpretations and not all PSPs support both modes. Method 1) With some PSPs, it is possible to use test mode without having contacted them. Method 2) You will only have access to test mode after you have registered with the PSP. Some PSPs will not support test mode at all. Note: To operate in test mode with Authorize.Net (US only) you will have to select this option at their web site. |
|
Pre-authorize transactions |
This option reserves the funds on a credit card without actually taking the money. The amount of the transaction will be removed from a customer's available credit limit. Once you have shipped the goods, you can then contact the PSP in order to actually take the pre-authorised funds. |
|
Charge transactions immediately |
This option charges the credit card immediately. |
|
Information and Registration |
Click the button to visit the PSP web site for further details. |
Once you have set up a PSP, you will see some extra options on the main 'Payment and Security' tab. These are:
|
Field |
Meaning |
|
Auto-delete PSP-pending Orders |
Sometimes, when you are using a PSP, an order will come down without a corresponding payment. This happens when a customer abandons their order after being transferred to the PSP. These orders automatically go into the 'Pending Payment Service Provider' tab in the orders area (see Orders In Actinic). Select this box if you want to also mark them to be deleted after a set time period. |
|
Purge on Delete |
Select this box if you want to permanently remove the deleted orders from the orders area. |
|
Expiry Period |
Enter the number of days that you want to hold onto orders that have come down without a corresponding payment. |
Known Limitations with HSBC Secure ePayments
Please be aware of the following known issues with HSBC:
1. The customer's address details will not be passed into HSBC if you are using simple tax calculations and simple shipping calculations. This is because HSBC requires a country code (provided by advanced shipping and tax calculation in Actinic) in order to display address information correctly.
2. If you allow customers to ship orders to a different delivery address to the invoice address, then none of the address information is passed to HSBC.
If you use the default settings for shipping and tax that are provided when you first start v8 then you will not experience an issue with the first point. See Only Allowing One Address Per Order for details on preventing customers using entering different invoice and delivery addresses.