With the Fast Charge Payment Gateway Batch Processing, you can process Credit Card and Electronic Check (ACH) purchases by uploading a file of transactions. It’s safe, Batch credit card processing secure, and easy to use. Just create a file of transactions using our Batch Processing Specification (you can use MS Excel to create the file). Then FTP uploads the file to our batch processing server. Fast Charge will process the batch and send back a receipt file with the results of the processing. With batch credit card processing you can upload the file through your payment gateway account or via secure FTP.
Upload Batch File
The Process Batch feature will allow you to upload a formatted text file containing records of transactions to be processed. This file can be either comma or tab-delimited with each record on a new line. The file can contain records of a different type but each column must contain the same field for each record.
Once the file has been uploaded you will be able to reformat your columns to match the fields required by the processor. Below are links to some preformatted templates that can be used for this purpose.
- Credit Card
- ACH
- Recurring
- Check 21
- Third-Party Check
- Stored Profile
Advantages:
- Reduced processing time – reduces the time needed to input transactions in a MO/TO environment.
- Integrate with your existing applications – Export transactions from your existing accounting or POS application and upload them to Fast Charge for processing.
- Available anytime – Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
- Works with your existing gateway account – Transactions processed by batch are sent through the same secure payment engine as your online transactions, and are available for viewing 24×7 using the Online Merchant Center system.
How It Works
Interactions between you and your customer browser are not shown in Figure 1, because this process assumes the interactions to have accumulated into the transaction requests comprising the batch file.
- You prepare a batch file of transaction requests in accordance with the file and record formats.
- The file is PGP-encrypted to prevent unauthorized inspection of the contents.
- Your system connects to the Online Commerce Suite system server via the Internet using the Online Commerce
- Suite SFTP URL, using a login and password provided by Customer Service.
- Select the /Uploads directory and transmit the file using SFTP. You can also place the batch file into the
- Uploads/HighVolume directory if you wish to process a large number of transactions at once, but the transactions in the batch file are not guaranteed to complete in the same order in which they appear in the batch file because multiple transactions will be processed concurrently.
- Online Commerce Suite scans the \Uploads and \Uploads\HighVolume directories several times a minute and moves any uploaded files behind a firewall prior to the actual transaction processing.
- The batch file begins processing and the results for each transaction are immediately visible in the regular Transaction Report of the Online Commerce Suite.
- When the batch has completed processing, Online Commerce Suite can optionally return a receipt file containing
the transaction results to your system. This can be done using FTP or E-Mail, and the file may be encrypted using
the industry-standard PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) system. Improperly formatted or incomplete records appearing
in the batch file are discarded and do not show up in any reports or the receipt file. Empty batch files (or those
appearing to be empty because of formatting problems) generate no receipt.
Billing Options
- 0 = No Recurring Billing Cycle
- 1 = Weekly Recurring Billing Cycle
- 2 = Monthly Recurring Billing Cycle
- 3 = Quarterly Recurring Billing Cycle
- 4 = Semi-Annual Recurring Billing Cycle
- 5 = Annual Recurring Billing Cycle
- 6 = Bi-Weekly Recurring Billing Cycle
- 7 = Bi-Annual Recurring Billing Cycle
- 8 = Quad Weekly (28 days) Recurring Billing Cycle
- 9 = One Time Recurring Billing Cycle
- 10 = Daily Recurring Billing Cycle
- 11 = Bi-Monthly Recurring Billing Cycle
File Format
The batch transaction request file is an ANSI-format text file with one transaction per line and a single TAB (ANSI 9) character separating each field. If a required field is not applicable to your needs (such as the Sub ID field for merchants with multiple sites), the required field must still be included in the record but should be left blank. None of the optional fields or their delimiters that follow the last required field needs to be supplied.
Each transaction record starts with a Transaction ID and a Record Type. The Transaction ID is supplied by you, the Merchant, and is used to link the batch file record to your database for later reconciliation of the transaction results. For example, you could pass a Customer ID or Account Number from your own software system as the Transaction ID. The Record Type tells Online Commerce Suite what to do with the remaining fields on the line; the meaning of each field depends on the Record Type.
Because the data for each transaction includes a Record Type, you may submit different types of transactions in a single file. For example, you could submit a single file containing both credit card and check sales, and update the recurring database with new members.
If you have no programming expertise, the easiest way to create a file in the required format is to place each input field into separate columns in Microsoft Excel, with one record per row. Column A should contain the Transaction ID, and column B should contain the Record Type. Subsequent columns need to be filled in with the additional fields of the record format you wish to process. Save the file to disk using the Save As command; when prompted for the name of the file, be sure to change the type from Microsoft Excel Workbook (*.xls) to Text (Tab Delimited). Online Commerce Suite™ Batch Processing Guide Page
Stored Profile Transactions
The following tables describe required and optional data elements that can be sent to the Fast Charge gateway to complete a transaction (the table is not viewable on Smartphones — it is too large).
For detailed information about the batch file format, download the Batch Processing Guide. You can also call us any time at (800) 757-5453