Re: interchange for e-commerce?

[maverick]

The credit card part I can help with. I have a client whose site has online payments and it uses the 'PayFlow Pro' system from Verisign. There is a Perl interface to the library which is very straight forward ($return_hash = pfpro($hash_ref)). I use it under Linux, but I think there are versions for a bunch of different platforms. You do have to do some setup with verisign and your bank to make all of this work, which if I remember correctly is basicly a few forms and a fee. The other thing you'll need is a SSL certificate so that you can run your e-commerce app under SSL. Don't even consider handling credit card info without using SSL on the server.

/\/\averick
perl -l -e "eval pack('h*','072796e6470272f2c5f2c5166756279636b672');"

[dshahin]

thanks for the tip. seems like they have just what I need. should I buy a certificate from them too, the price seems a little steep to me.

[maverick]

The price is pretty steep...but there aren't many choices.

Now here's the part that really sucks. All the certificate gets you is not having a dialog box pop up in the browser that says "we don't know who these people are. do you want to trust them?" If you click yes, then everything works exactly as it would if you went to say eBay or some other such site.

Basically what the certificate from versign is, is a third party that the browser already trusts saying that your site is to be trusted. Pure psychology, dialog boxes of that sort tend to spook people...to me the whole thing is a racket.

/\/\averick
perl -l -e "eval pack('h*','072796e6470272f2c5f2c5166756279636b672');"

[drewbie]

Keep in mind that Verisign is evil incarnate. ;-) They now own Network Solutions, which is another evil corporation. How much spam do you get from NS selling the domain database? They do it themselves, even they say they don'w/won't! And yes, I'm a bit biased.

See http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/3/8/17563/05947 for just one example. There are many others.