PS3 - maunal cc processing

I have a client (merchant) who likes PS3, but whose products require extensive assembly after an order is placed. I am not sure how the law reads other than I know that timely shipment (1-2 business days) is expected by the banks and customers. In this merchants situation, he must obtain the credit card number at the time of sale, but not submit the card number for processing right away. Instead, he must wait until the product is assembled, manually process the order (charge the cc) via a virtual terminal, and then ship the product. Assembly can take from a week to 10 days.

Here is the likely scenario:
1. Customer places product(s) in the shopping cart and proceeds to checkout. Since the customer must provide their cc number, a secure server is still needed, but no payment gateway. From the customers perspective the transaction looks just like any normal online purchase, except their cc is not processed right away.

2. The merchant and customer must both receive notification that an order has been placed and received, explaining the details and particulars of this type of order.

Will this work?:
1. No payment gateway is needed. I just need to capture the customer information, including their cc number, and store the information in a new field for cc numbers in the orders table in the database? The question becomes is it secure? And if not, how to make it secure? Does the entire PS3 database need to be move to a secure server?

2. What kind of notification is triggered by PS3 when an order is placed now. Emails? The features list says that as part of "Total checkout control", an "Order email sent". Is this email sent to the customer or merchant, or both? If not, how to use Universal Email to trigger the appropriate emails?

3. What is the best way for the merchant to retrieve the cc number from the database? Login to the store admin area, and retrieve the cc number from the "Find Order/Order Search" page (after a field for the cc number has been added to the page)?

Thanks,
Robert

This is something that is not recommended, as you would require going through the pci compliance:
www.pcisecuritystandards.org/

This is a pretty expensive process. I would recommend using the no payment gateway option and then when the product is assembled, get the credit card information over the phone instead of storing it in a database.

The email is sent to both I believe, so you wouldn't need to edit it using Universal Email.

Thanks Jimmy.

I found this reference regarding a process step called "AUTHONLY". The author said:

"Do not store credit card numbers on your own server! If you need to collect credit card data from your customers, only to charge the card later use the AUTHONLY. That way you pass all credit card and personal information of your customer right on to your Merchant Account keeping your customers information safe and secure. You can then bill the credit card at a later date through your web based control panel for your merchant account."

Question: Is this type of transaction possible with PS3, or is this done on the Payment Gateway end, or merchant account end, or all three?

This isn't something that is built in to PowerStore 3, so you would have to manually modify the code to get something like this set up. The simplest way to accomplish what you're going for would be to store the buyer's contact information and get the credit card info over the phone.

Ok, this is what I found on the PayPal website. The first link references the Authorization and Capture method where "Authorization & Capture, or Auth/Capture, allows you to authorize the availability of funds for a transaction but delay the capture of funds until a later time. This is often useful for merchants who have a delayed order fulfillment process......"

howto_admin_authcapture

From the PayPal site, "Authorize & Capture can be used in tandem with other PayPal payment options, such as Express Checkout, Direct Payment, and standard payment buttons.", and according to a person in PayPal sales, Auth/Capture can be used with Website Payments Pro.

So, my question is Jimmy, since PS3 works with Website Payments Pro, do you see any reason why it should be a problem on the PS3 end if the Auth/Capture is part of the process, since that seems to happen on the PayPal side?

Thanks,
Robert

There shouldn't be any problems if the information returned by PayPal is the same and the requests that need to be sent form the PowerStore are the same. You should check with PayPal to see what changes need to be made to the API calls to just do Auth/capture.

Thanks Jimmy!

No problem. If you run into any additional issues, feel free to open a new thread.