Forum Moderators: buckworks
This is a bit about me. I use actinic software to run my catalog and a couple of years ago I could use the pdq machine in the shop to process the payments. Then I added HSBC secure e-payments to process internet payments because HSBC no longer allow you to process internet payments through their pdq machine. After a year I have found that a large number of people like to look at the website and then phone with their credit card details. Most other people like to use the actinic software to send us their credit card details and a few people like to transfer to HSBC.
The HSBC site frequently crashes while customers are putting in their details and they revert to the phones.
The merchant end of the HSBC site is so complicated I feel I can't train any shop assistants to use it.
The system also doesn't allow me to send my customers a badly printed recepit like I would when using a pdq machine. And badly printed though it may be many customers call me and ask why they haven't received the receipt.
The use of this system has also divorced the payment mechanism from the stock, making for some very long boring phone calls while I work out which orders I can take payment for.
Are other people having similar problems? It seems to me that with a trading history of 7 years with no fraud, and conservative customers who would like a receipt, I would be better to use the pdq machine, does anyone else who banks with HSBC do this?
Sorry for the long post and thanks for any suggestions,
Meg
I've been in a similar situation and this is how my system hangs together, using a combination of Barclaycard Merchant Services and Protx for the online payment handling.
I take payment information from the customer within my own pages (using a secure certificate over SSL) and store them on the database. The Protx ASP component then attempts to process the payment reporting any errors back to the user such as invalid card number etc. However, if it can't connect to Protx to process the payment (their server is down perhaps) then the system just pretends that the payment has been processed OK and the user in none the wiser. I simply receive an email from my webserver telling me I need to manually process a payment before despatching the goods.
Protx also provide an ActiveX component that you can use in your own Access, VB etc. application to manually process payments "offline" when a customer wants to pay over the phone. My programming skills aren't amazing and I've mangaged to get all this working without too much effort. At the end of the day it means I never miss an order whatever the situation with the payment service provider.
