General FAQ for CCVS
What does CCVS do?
On the most basic, fundamental level, Credit Card Verification System, or CCVS, uses your computer to simulate a credit card swipe box (aka a POS, Point Of Sale, Terminal). This means that you can use your existing merchant account with CCVS. But CCVS does a lot more than that.
CCVS allows you to become your own payment processor, and is designed to support use in both small scale and large-scale environments. You can use CCVS for a single web page or billing application, or set up a payment gateway server to support hundreds or thousands of merchants, submitting requests from other web servers.
CCVS is designed as a stand-alone product with several APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow it to be customized and easily integrated with third party software applications or database products.
CCVS is safe, secure, and easy to use. Written in ANSI C and conforming to POSIX standards, CCVS is portable and designed to be easily integrated with modern operating systems, programming languages, and the Internet. It is designed for easy scripting and programming, so users can use CCVS to automate web commerce, batch processing, or enhance any application that requires credit card processing.
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Can I use CCVS in Canada?
Yes! We support the NDC protocol, which any bank in Canada can configure your merchant account to use. Please contact your merchant services representatives, and tell them you want to process credit cards through NDC.
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Can I use CCVS in my country?
That depends. You must find out what protocols your particular credit card clearing institution can support. If CCVS supports that protocol, you should be okay. The protocol CCVS supports that is most likely to be supported by an institution outside of the US is the Visa 2nd Generation K Format protocol (aka VITAL).
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Can you add support for my country or clearing house?
The most important relationship we can have when pursuing business development in a country other than the USA is with a local bank or clearing institution. We are very clear about what it takes to adapt our system for use elsewhere but need a strong partner to help coordinate and manage the technical aspects of the banking relationship as well as the marketing initiatives.
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How can I integrate CCVS into my network operations?
There are many solutions, depending upon how you want to do the network layer between the systems on your network and the server running CCVS. We don't supply a network layer ourselves (since we don't want to take on the liability issues if someone misconfigures their network), but our functions are easily called from several network aware languages.
For example, one customer is using a Java network layer to call a servlet on their Linux server. Another has integrated CCVS into their web server and make https: calls from elsewhere on their network.
The easiest might be to use our PHP3 module - we have a module that will allow you to use all of CCVS' functionality from PHP3. You would access the module by opening a URL from your windows box (there are a number a ways to do this, depending upon what language you use on the calling machine).
There are other options - since we supply APIs in C (as well as the aforementioned PHP3, Perl 5, Python, Tcl, and Java), you could easily (for example) quickly write an RPC-based layer to call our functions on the server from your C++ programs.
Please feel free to give us a call to discuss what options you have available to you.
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Give me some examples of user for CCVS.
Alice wants to open a web storefront. She creates a CGI program using our C interface, and accesses it via HTML forms. Now she can accept credit card payments over the web, and can use our AVS features to prevent fraud.
Bob wants to set up a system for a dozen telephone operators to take catalog orders over the phone. He uses our Tcl extension to create a Tcl/Tk GUI that presents a simple interface for telephone operators. Since the operators are just using simple X terminals and all the software is running on Bob's central server, he only needs to install our software on one computer, and the operators don't have to wait for an available phone line - all of their transactions will go out over the same phone call.
Carol has an ISP, with a customer database kept on a database server. She writes a Perl script, combining our Perl module with a module for her database system. Now, every month she can just run the script, and it will read out her customer data, process monthly billing, and update the records in the database to indicate payment has taken place.
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What do I need to use CCVS?
- Unix/Linux machine
- Modem
- Merchant account which uses one of the processors / protocols supported by CCVS (link should go to the last FAQ on this page)
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Do we have to use a local modem? Can credit verification also occur over the Internet?
The software we provide only uses a modem. There are services available over the internet for clearing credit cards (some even use our software!), but this is not a service we provide.
The business case for not depending upon another service over the net basically has three main parts: cost, short-term reliability, and long-term reliability.
Firstly, cost: all on-line clearing services charge a per transaction fee. With CCVS, you pay us only for the software and then any additional support contract you may desire.
Everyone who's been on the net for any length of time knows that technical problems can cause big piece of the net to be inaccessible from any one site - a customer being able to reach you does not guarantee that you can reach a third party (i.e., a credit card clearing service). With CCVS, you depend only upon the phone system and the same clearing house mechanisms that all retail merchants use.
Additionally, credit card clearing services are not the most reliable of businesses. Cybercash, for example - the largest such service - is losing millions of dollars per quarter. If the service you depend upon disappears, your cash flow disappears until you can find a new mechanism. With CCVS, just as with a hardware credit card POS terminal, once your software is set up you only need us if you want software support or new features in your software. If Red Hat disappeared off the face of the earth a month after you purchase, you could still use CCVS to clear credit card data.
We believe that it's bad business to have one's cash flow depend upon a third party that doesn't enjoy the longevity and reliability that the credit card clearing houses do.
CCVS allows you to be sure that you can accept your customers' credit card payments, both for the short term and the long term.
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Which processors and protocols is CCVS compatible with?
CCVS is compatible with the following processors and protocols. The certification letters CCVS received from these processing companies contain more detailed information.
- First Data Corporation's ETC PLUS protocol
- First Data Corporation (FDC) can sometimes by known by the names of its subsidiary branches, like First Data Resources (FDR) or First Data Merchant Services (FDMS). The ETC PLUS protocol has many aliases, and may be referred to as "FDR7", "FDMS ETC+", "ETC7", or "Omaha".
- First Data Corporation's South Platform protocol
- Another FDC protocol, also known as "Nabanco"
- Global Payment Systems' MAPP protocol
- Global Payment Systems (GPS) is a subsidiary of National Data Corporation (NDC). Both can configure merchant accounts to use the MAPP protocol. Sometimes referred to as "St. Louis".
- Global Payment Systems' NDC protocol
- NDC is another protocol from GPS/NDC. It is available in Canada, for merchants with Canadian bank merchant accounts, as well in the US. Sometimes referred to as "Atlanta".
- VISA International's VITAL protocol
- The branch of VISA that does credit card processing is called Vital Processing Services. The VITAL protocol may be known as "Visa 2nd generation" or "K-format".
- Paymentech's UTF protocol
- Sometimes known as GENSAR.
- NOVA Information Systems' NOVA protocol
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