Credit Card Information

[paoloai]

I'm quite a beginner in this area, I hope I'm not saying too many nonsenses and also I hope this is the right forum for this...

 

I'm building a custom reservation system running on a private LAN; at a certain point the program needs to charge an amount of money on a credit card whose info are provided by the customer on the phone.

The program will then connect with some Payment gateway through an internet connection (let's say Authorize.net) and pass all the credit card information for the charge, get a confirmation and approve the reservation.

 

Questions:

- Is this scenario correct? I've never build an custom application with online payment facility; does it make any different if the call to the payment gateway is coming from an program running on a private LAN instead of a web server?

 

- what is the minimum set of information the operator will have to ask the customer and key in a form to actually start the card process? I mean Credit card number, expiration date, sec digits, cardholder name, billing address, etc.

 

- I know we have to purchase an Merchant Account but where in this process are we referring it? should I pass wome merchant accnt number when calling the gateway? How the gateway can be sure it's really me?

 

thanks!!!