We have a client who wants us to develop a payment gateway similar to Auth.net or LinkPoint. To tell the truth I have no idea even where to look for. Main requirement is the ability to connect directly to major US processing networks like Vital, First data, Nova, etc.

Can anybody on this board suggest where I can find any infomation about it? I suspect those networks should have something like API maybe, although I do not think this is a publicly available info. Any ideas or advice will be greatly appreciated. Thank you. :lovewht:

You would need to contact the appropriate department at each of the front-end networks that you wanted to integrate into in order to find out about their integration & certification programs.

In many cases, there are costs that will apply to get certified with them. You wll also need to determine how you want to handle connecting to them - typically this is done with leased lines that must be setup between the gateway and the processor.

Then in addition to that, you'll need to work out the security details and pursue your CISP/PCI certification by an on-site auditor. In all likelihood, you will also need to get a sponsoring bank and register as a Third Party Servicer with Visa.

Your client will definitely need to have a substantial budget, strong financials in their business and a well planned business model to make the effort success along with technical expertise. Best of luck with your project!

Back to year of 2001 we planned this type of project with investor, but as we find out this will cost SO MUCH ($millions) and require big responisiblity's :)

Thanks for all inputs.

Does it mean that Authorize.net is also registered as 3rd party service provider with Visa/MC? Although it might seem true with Auth.net, but in case of smaller gateways like SkipJack, BluePay, or NetBilling, do you think they are also registered and have a sponcored bank to back them up? It's hard to believe.

What do you think about WebAuthorize from ICVerify? Did anybody work with this product?

Thanks for all inputs.

Does it mean that Authorize.net is also registered as 3rd party service provider with Visa/MC? Although it might seem true with Auth.net, but in case of smaller gateways like SkipJack, BluePay, or NetBilling, do you think they are also registered and have a sponcored bank to back them up? It's hard to believe.

What do you think about WebAuthorize from ICVerify? Did anybody work with this product?

A lot of small operators used thier own merchant account to process cards for other people. This was against the card companies rules and many of these 3pp processors had their accounts suspended. This in turn means mrchants don't get paid. You will find a bunch of horror stories in this forum.

After the fiasco with iBill, Paysystems, PaySat etc. the card companies are getting a bit more cautious (not before time) so if you are going to do something do it properly. This means $2 to $3 million plus all the security systems

A lot of small operators used thier own merchant account to process cards for other people. This was against the card companies rules and many of these 3pp processors had their accounts suspended. This in turn means mrchants don't get paid. You will find a bunch of horror stories in this forum.

After the fiasco with iBill, Paysystems, PaySat etc. the card companies are getting a bit more cautious (not before time) so if you are going to do something do it properly. This means $2 to $3 million plus all the security systems

Please explain how your post relates to payment gateway development. I think you should differentiate between establishing of 3PP/ISPS and development of payment gateway, which is strictly a software issue.

It can be very difficult. I have actually been contacted by someone to write up a proposal for this. One suggestion - it might be a little quicker on some aspects - use ClearCommerce as the engine to run the gateway. Raising the money is the hard part of course, but all things are possible. Once they finalize that paperwork, who knows. There are a lot of things out there that each gateway is missing and if you could roll them all up into one, and charge accordingly - you would have a decent service.

Netbilling is not listed as being CISP compliant either so that is one thing that you want your gateway to be. They handle a lot of adult accounts, somewhat similar to 2000Charge. Plus they offer customer support for your clients - which other gateways do not because it is not in their business plan.

Let's then change the project specs. What if we need to develop a gateway not for a public commercial use, like auth.net, but for one enterprise level e-commerce merchant who has around 2 dozens of different merchant accounts for different lines of business, and tired of getting new gateway account each time he need to open a new merchant account. For simplicity let's assume that we need connection to only 1 or 2 major processing networks, like for instance FDC and Nova.
What would you suggest?

If your goal is to implement this for a single large merchant, it would be easier to buy some off-the-shelf back-end software... something along the lines of PC Charge and then integrate it into your particular application.

Ultimately, that will get you rapid access through a pre-certified solution into all of the leading networks and if you are only going to have about a dozen merchant ID's (MIDs) on it then the cost won't be prohibitive at all.

Thanks, CDG. Do you now any other company/product besides PCCharge? We checked them already, but their IPCharge product is not quite ready. Looking for their competitors.

That was what I was looking at - costs. Clear Commerce might have something available as well as 2000Charge. Some of the gateways might be a better solution but I would hesitate using Netbilling until they are listed as being CISP compliant.

There are a few different solutions that are available - but usually having your own gateway for each MID is better in the long run as well. There are so many things that happen during a CC transaction for something to go wrong. And decreasing those chances is something to consider as well.

Download OSCommerce, it is opensource, look at it's code, they have code to connect to some of the gateways you are after, you might be able to get the parameters that are required for each from there. It will at least give you a head start on what you might be confronting

He is building his own and he will be creating those parameters. Other parameters though are determined by the acquiring bank.