Importance

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Abstract

A system for determining the cause of lost, delayed or erroneous responses in a network for authorizing payment card transactions from the point of view of the point-of-sale terminal that forms part of the network. A request for authorization is entered into the terminal, the terminal transmits a message requesting authorization to a computer in the network, and receives a return message in response from the computer. The terminal logs the origination time of the message, the elapsed time between the origination time and the time at which it receives the return message, the transaction serial number, and, optionally, other data for each request for authorization. In a variation, each computer in the network adds a time stamp to the message as the message returns from the computer to the terminal. The time stamp shows the computer elapsed time, computer identity, authorization status, etc. The terminal additionally logs the time stamps received in the return message. In a further variation, each computer in the network adds a time stamp to the message each time the computer processes the message. The computer time stamp shows the computer transit time instead of the computer elapsed time. In all variations, the terminal uploads the logged data from time-to-time for analysis, preferably by a computer in the network.

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First Claim