How does Register handle electronic payments?
People can pay via American Express, VISA, MasterCard or FirstVirtual. For the credit cards, they enter their card information, the Register program checks the data entry using the checksum in the card number, and then it disguises the card data so that it can be transmitted with some small amount of safety across the internet. (Please note, the algorithm that munges the credit card data is not guaranteed to be secure, it just does a fairly good job of making the credit card data not look like a credit card number.) A paybot slurps in the electronic payment information, parses the data into a database, sends a reply to the payer (with a copy to the author if desired) and then submits the payment to the credit card processing company.
Modification Date: Sunday, September 10, 1995