Developer's Guide

Performing Direct Payment Credit Card Transactions
How Direct Payment Works
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22 Website Payments Pro Developer’s Guide
How Direct Payment Works
Figure 3-1 shows the general flow of customer checkout with Direct Payment.
The numbered steps in the figure are described below:
1. On your website, the customer chooses to pay with a credit card and enters the credit card number
and other details.
2. The customer reviews the order.
3. When your customer clicks “Pay” to place the order, you perform a transaction to request payment,
and the payment transaction is initiated.
4. You transfer your customer to your order confirmation page.
The “Pay” button on your website sends the payment request to the server, including required
information you collected from the customer, such as the amount of the transaction, the
buyers credit card number, expiry date, browser IP address, and an element that specifies
whether this transaction is a final sale (complete transaction amount including postage,
packing and tax) or an authorisation for a final amount that you must capture later with a
Delayed Capture transaction.
About Direct Payment Credit Card Processing
Direct Payment credit card processing occurs in two steps — a real-time authorisation and a
capture (settlement) of the funds that were authorised. You perform these two steps either as a
single Sale transaction or as two types of transactions, an Authorisation and Delayed Capture,
depending on your business model.