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The PTGiftCard component is used to manipulate funds on Stored Value (Gift) Cards with the Paymentech NetConnect system on the Tampa platform. This component supports card-present gift card transactions, and allows for simple, direct, secure communication to the Paymentech SSL gateway through a standard Internet connection. This component can be integrated into web pages or stand- alone Point Of Sale applications. Because all SSL communications are handled inside the component, any application or web page can be deployed without the need for expensive dedicated SSL servers.

NOTE: What follows is a very short description of the component interfaces. For more information, please consult the help files that come with the respective package.

Remarks

A Stored Value Card (or Gift Card as they are commonly called) is a not actually a type of credit or debit card. Simply put, a Stored Value Card is a card with a magnetic strip on the back that holds information about monies that have been "pre-paid" into an account for the purpose of making financial transactions. Examples include a retailer's gift card, a prepaid telephone card, a college campus meal plan card, a reloadable subway pass, etcetera. Not included are government income-support cards, otherwise known as EBT cards or electronic food stamps.

There just a few steps to setting up the component and sending transactions. First, set the MerchantNumber, TerminalNumber, ClientNumber, UserId, and Password with the information given to you when you signed up for Paymentech service. You should also set your PINCapability and CashRegisterId at this time.

After the merchant information is setup, you may enter transaction data. When the Card is Manually Entered, the merchant should fill the Card, Card, and Card properties. Otherwise, you should fill the Card property with the Track 2 data read from the back of the card, and set Card to Track2. These are the only two Entry Data Sources supported for Stored Value (Gift) Cards.

Now you must choose what transaction you wish to make. Adding Value to a card, Redeeming a card, voiding a previous transaction, or retrieving the card's current balance.

To add funds to an existing Gift Card, simply set the TransactionAmount with the amount to add to the card, and then call AddValue. Activating a new gift card is handled the same way. If the card indicated by Card (or Card) has not yet been activated, calling AddValue will automatically activate it with the amount indicated by TransactionAmount.

To redeem funds from a Gift Card due to a customer purchase, set TransactionAmount to the total for the purchase and call RedeemCard. If the Gift Card account contains the enough funds, Response will indicate the card was approved. If there are not enough funds available on the card to cover the TransactionAmount, normally the transaction will be declined. However, the merchant may set PartialRedemption to True. This allows the customer to split the cost of the purchase between the Gift Card and another form of payment. Instead of declining the Gift Card, Response will contain the amount deducted from the Gift Card. The merchant may subtract that from TransactionAmount to determine the difference to charge the customer.

Finally, you may inquire as to the total funds contained on the card by calling BalanceInquiry. This will not effect the amount of funds contained on the card in any way.

The status of any of the above transactions will be stored in the Response property, with human-readable text appearing in Response. Like the PTCHARGE component, there are several other Response fields which will contain data that should be logged. However, there are a few new properties specific to the PTGiftCard component: Response will be returned after all transactions except VoidTransaction, and will contain the current balance of the Gift Card. Response will indicate the balance BEFORE the last transaction went through. The Response property is used for tracking after the sale, and must be printed on every customer receipt.

Once an authorization request is approved, one of two things happen. If your Paymentech account is setup with the Host Auto Close feature, you need take no further action. The host will close the current open batch at a designated time each day. This means that there is no end of day batch processing required from the merchant. In order for the merchant's batch to be included in the Paymentech Host Auto Close process, the merchant parameter file on the host must indicate that the merchant is Auto Close. Without this flag being set, the merchant's transactions must be settled with a Manual Batch Release.

If your account is not setup with Host Auto Close, then after an authorization is approved the transaction is added to the current batch on the Paymentech Server, and the money in the customer's account is blocked and tagged for the merchant. The transaction must go through the Manual Batch Release Settlement process in order for the blocked money to be transferred to the merchant's account. To release a batch for settlement, please see the PTSETTLE component.

Note that this component only supports the above two settlement methods, and does not support Terminal Capture processing.

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