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- Introduction
- The PC-Charge Web Interface Kit makes it easy to process credit cards using a Web server on the Internet or an Intranet. By using a secure Web server and running PC-Charge locally, secure transactions can be executed today! This technical document explains how the Web Interface Kit can fit into your existing or future Web configuration.
- Web Communication
In a typical World Wide Web interaction, the end-user
connects to the Internet and uses a Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft
Internet Explorer. The user directs the Web browser to access a particular Web address,
and the Web server at that address responds to the user's requests by sending information
over the Internet back to the user's Web browser. Pictorially, the connection looks
something like this: If both the Web browser and the Web server are secure, then any communication in either direction is encrypted and cannot be accessed by third parties. Browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer have secure communication built-in. Web servers such as Netscape's Commerce Server, Microsoft's Internet Information Server, and O'Reilly's WebSite Pro all have the capability to handle secure communication. End-users can thus confidently provide credit card information over this type of connection.
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The Web Interface Kit is a
Straightforward Add-on 
The PC-Charge Web Interface Kit provides a link
between the Web server, which initially receives the credit card information from the
end-user, and PC-Charge, which actually performs the processing. The simplest
configuration involves loading the entire Kit on the same computer with the Web server,
looking something like this: To use this configuration, the computer running the Web server, PC-Charge, and the Interface Kit must be a Windows 95 or Windows NT machine. Assuming that the end-user connects to your secure Web server configuration, this process is entirely secure -- the end-user provides credit card information over a secure Internet connection, and your processing computer transmits the information to the processing network over standard telephone lines, just like millions of merchants do every day.
- How the Web Interface Kit Works
- The end-user connects to your Web server through an HTML form which requests the required information -- credit card number, expiration date, amount, etc. A sample form is included with the Interface Kit. The end-user completes the form and clicks an action button that sends the data from the form to your Web server. The Web server then passes the data to the Web Interface Kit's Common Gateway Interface (CGI) module. This CGI program is written in a language called Perl, a portable and popular language for Web programming. The CGI module communicates with a TCP/IP stub application included in the Kit, called GOServer. In turn, GOServer communicates with PC-Charge to process the transaction. Once the transaction is complete the result is returned through the same path back to the end-user's screen. While this process may sound complex, it is standard procedure for operating on the Internet/Intranet and the entire process -- from submitting data to receiving a result -- only takes a matter of seconds.
- The Web Interface Kit is Interoperable
- If your Web server is not running on a Windows 95 or Windows NT computer, or if you wish
to offload the transaction processing to a different computer, the Interface Kit can be
split into its two parts: the CGI (Common Gateway Interface) module and the GOServer
module. The configuration looks like this:
The GOServer module and PC-Charge must run on a Windows 95 or Windows NT computer, and it must be running TCP/IP as a networking protocol (which is included with both Windows 95 and Windows NT). The CGI module is written in Perl and uses the Common Gateway Interface to interact with the Web server. Consequently it can run under virtually any Web server (e.g., Microsoft IIS, O'Reilly WebSite, Netscape Commerce Server) and operating system (e.g., Unix, OS/2, Windows NT, or Macintosh). Since it runs on the same computer as the Web server, this computer by definition has TCP/IP available. As long as your LAN is secure, this configuration is just as secure as the previous configuration.
- The Web Interface Kit is Flexible
There are other configurations as well; because the
CGI module is fully portable with source code provided, and it communicates with the
GOServer using TCP/IP, the Interface Kit is extremely flexible. For example,
card-not-present merchants could use the Interface Kit to set up an Intranet-based
multi-user card processing system: - Summary
- We have covered only a few of the possible configurations of the PC-Charge Web Interface Kit. Chances are, whatever your Web configuration, the PC-Charge Web Interface Kit's simplicity, interoperability, and flexibility will allow you to quickly and easily add credit card processing to your Web system.