Looking for a way to validate credit cards

Lostinspace

Hi there,

I have a scenario and I am hoping someone might suggest a solution for this.

• My client owns a bed and breakfast
• On their website they just have a contact form for people to enquire about availability.
• Prospective customer completes the form and then received a call from the my client to verify that they are who they say they are.
• My client is asking them for their credit card details over the phone and by email just to hold that as security in case they don't show up on the day of the booking.
• My client does not take payment until the customer checks out. This is normally paid by cash.
• Unfortunately taking credit card details over the phone or by email is not secure.
• My client is looking for a secure way to take their card details and validate that card, but not charge it until the day that they check out.

Does anyone have any thoughts of what could be a possible solution here? I would appreciate any guidance.

Thank you

smcelhinney

There's one of two things he's looking to do, which are

a) secure a pre-payment (shadow charge) - you'll need a payment gateway for that, not sure if Realex/Stripe/PayPal do that (edit: its called "Auth and Capture", you learn something new every day , and PayPal/Stripe support it with caveats)
b) validate the credit card only - then check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm which is used to validate credit cards.

Bear in mind, that if he's "storing" credit cards, he needs a PCI-compliant system.

Hope that gives you a start.

Lostinspace

smcelhinney wrote: »

There's one of two things he's looking to do, which are

a) secure a pre-payment (shadow charge) - you'll need a payment gateway for that, not sure if Realex/Stripe/PayPal do that (edit: its called "Auth and Capture", you learn something new every day , and PayPal/Stripe support it with caveats)
b) validate the credit card only - then check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm which is used to validate credit cards.

Bear in mind, that if he's "storing" credit cards, he needs a PCI-compliant system.

Hope that gives you a start.

Thanks for your detailed response. I understand what you're saying. I've contacted both Stripe and PayPal so I'm just waiting to hear back from them now. Will let you know how that goes. Thanks again.

sawdoubters

you don't want paypal it shuts your account for no reason

with your money in it



Equipment: Businesses need equipment with which to capture credit card information. While some companies might happen upon a processor that lends the equipment at no charge, such a situation is rare. More often, companies will need to buy something Budgets can be tight for brand-new businesses. Many opt to lease the equipment. Be careful. Those leases are often cannot be cancelled, and the sum of lease payments far exceeds the original cost of the equipment there is an application fee or a programming fee or both. The Discount Rate: This fee doesn’t represent a discount to the business. Rather, it’s the percentage of each sale the merchant processor keeps.When a customer swipes plastic to buy something, the merchant processor is entitled to take two fees. The first is the discount rate. It ranges anywhere from just under 1 percent to as much as 5 percent. It can be difficult to figure out exactly what percentage you’re paying.Acceptance Fee/Transaction Charge: Any time a business swipes a card, it’s going to pay a flat fee for running the transaction. Just to get an approval or decline, a business will pay End-of-Month FeesThese fees range from .09 to .12 percent. That’s a small fraction of a percentage, but the number certainly looks bigger when applied to a month of sales

mneylon

Your client has to stop asking for credit card details via email - that is incredibly insecure and a really really bad idea.

tramoreman

Blacknight wrote: »

Your client has to stop asking for credit card details via email - that is incredibly insecure and a really really bad idea.

totally agree he should not be doing this he should set up a site to take payments.