Overview of Credit Card Processing at CMU

Credit Card Processing on a Regular Store Front

A regular storefront is used by anyone in the world who wishes to give CMU money. A department develops their own web pages for their storefront. The department webpages will provide all of the details regarding the item they are selling. The website will also collect all order information from the customer, with the exception of the payment information. It will collect information such as shipping information, item(s) the customer wishes to purchase, calculate sales tax and shipping charges. An invoice number is also assigned by the department website.

The invoice number, the departments store number (which we assign), and the detailed item information is sent to the credit card application. This is done when the customer pushes a button on the department webpage and is then transferred to the credit card application. The customer enters their own credit card information on a standard html page, on the acisX secure servers.

When the customer hits submit, the information is validated, written to the credit card oracle database on typhoon, then sent to Cybersource. Cybersource does some validation, saves the data, and then passes the data to PaymentTech. PaymentTech records the transaction, and sends a response back to Cybersource. Cybersource saves the information, and sends the response back to us. The response is written to the oracle database on typhoon. An appropriate message is displayed to the customer. If the transaction is successful, the web page is the customer's receipt of payment. It displays the detailed order information which was submitted from the department.

The transaction goes through the following servers

Dept Webserver	--->	acis server	--->	(oracle on typhoon)	--->
acis server	--->	Cybersource	--->	PaymentTech
acis server	<---	(oracle on typhoon)	<---	acis server	<---	Cybersource	<------

The customer sees the following web pages

last dept webpage

---->

Credit Card Collection Page

----->

Credit Card Response Page

Generic Store Front

A generic storefront is used only by people with pre authorized andrew ids. The generic storefront is intended to serve those departments who wish to process credit cards, but do not want their own ecommerce website. A good example would be a department who receives orders via phone or fax.

The process is almost identical to one described above. The only difference is that instead of a dept web server with dept web pages, the user goes to the acisX secure server and uses the generic store webpage. On the generic store webpage, the cmu user will enter the invoice number, and the individual item detail for the order. Then they will be taken to the standard credit card collection webpage, and processing will continue as detailed above.

Processing of Credits/Refunds

Preauthorized andrew ids can issue refunds for their storefront. A user searches for the transaction on a secure acisX webpage.

An example of this webpage can be found at the following link. https://acis.as.cmu.edu:4443/cc/reports/search.html

When they find their transaction, they click "Issue a Credit Now". They enter the amount which they would like to credit, up to the full amount of the original transaction. When they submit the transaction, it is processed in the same way as described above.

Electronic Check Processing

The student interface is Student Information Online. They enroll in electronic checking by providing their bank account routing number, account number, and a brief description of this account. One business day later this account is available to them to make payments.

They can setup as many of these accounts as they wish. These accounts can be deleted at any time. One of these accounts can be designated as ‘refund’ accounts. The refund account can also be used to make payments. If a student is eligible for a refund from enrollment, instead of cutting a check, this refund account will automatically be credited.

When they wish to make a payment, they select the account from which to make the payment, by selecting the appropriate brief description. They enter the amount of the payment and the payment date. The payment date needs to be 1 or more business days in the future, not to exceed 1 year. There is a 5 pm Eastern cut off time for transactions to be processed on the current business day.

It appears as though enrollment is the only current credit card storefront who accepts re-occurring payments. Therefore there are no immediate plans to setup the echeck capability with any other departments.

Capturing the echeck enrollment and payment information from the student.

AcisX -? write to sis database on typhoon

To send the echeck enrollment and payment information to Mellon,

- generate flat, fixed length datafiles on typhoon nightly - ftp the files through the leased line connection to Mellon - wait for confirmation that Mellon has received them ?? - delete routing number and account number from the sis database

ftp to Mellon server and pick up summary reports