Importance

Loading Importance Indicators...

Abstract

Secure transmission of data is provided between a plurality of computer systems over a public communication system, such as the Internet. Secure transmission of data is provided from a customer computer system to a merchant computer system, and for the further secure transmission of payment information regarding a payment instrument from the merchant computer system to a payment gateway computer system. The payment gateway system formats transaction information appropriately and transmits the transaction to the particular host legacy system. The host legacy system evaluates the payment information and returns a level of authorization of credit to the gateway which packages the information to form a secure transaction which is transmitted to the merchant which is in turn communicated to the customer by the merchant. The merchant can then determine whether to accept the payment instrument tendered or deny credit and require another payment instrument. An architecture that provides support for additional message types that are value-added extensions to the basic SET protocol, is provided by a preferred embodiment of the invention. The merchant can then determine whether to accept the payment instrument tendered or deny credit and require another payment instrument. An architecture that provides support for additional message types that are not SET compliant is provided by a preferred embodiment of the invention. An architecture for transmitting messages from a merchant-controlled computer system, such as a server, to an acquirer-controlled computer system, such as a gateway, is disclosed. The merchant-controlled computer system defines messages as text name-value pairs, and encrypts them using an encryption scheme such as PKCS-7. The encrypted name-value pairs are encoded into a text sequence using a text-encoding scheme such as Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions encoding. The messages are transmitted to the acquirer-controlled computer as payload data in a transmission block. The messages may be used, for example, to command the acquirer-controlled computer to perform settlement/reconciliation, to notify the acquirer-controlled computer of a logon or logoff operation, or to request the acquirer-controlled computer to transmit its parameter values.

Loading the Abstract Image...

First Claim