FirstSpot payment config question

[Paul]

We already have a prepaid card and credit card system in place for use with wired internet access PC's. The main processing is handled over the internet to our webserver using normal http post/get and securely via a 3rd party online credit card processing website.

I would like to know if your system could be configured to work with our existing charging system so that we can provide a seemless upgrade ? (Preferably the prepaid card option which works through normal web pages hosted on our servers.)

thanks

[kevin]

Yes, FirstSpot should work well with your existing charging system, like what we did for PayPal.

A few things to note:-

1) your customers may need to access a few external web sites before logging in. For example, the shopping cart page on your company web site, the 3rd party payment company, etc. Please make these sites as exception/free web sites through the Configuration Manager.

2) The flow of charging for prepaid cards in FirstSpot should be very similar to what your current system is doing, this flow works best with FirstSport:-

2.1) customers self-register an account (which creates such account in FirstSpot with zero airtime; the initial airtime can be configured through Configuration Manger though)

2.2) customers are diverted to your shopping cart page

2.3) they pay the airtime through your payment service vendor

2.4) after payment, the payment gateway will notify you through a pre-defined web page of your choice

2.5) the web page should contain scripts to update FirstSpot user database for the right airtime and user account accordingly

2.6) the customer will be able to surf the Internet with the airtime purchased

For 2.1) self sign-up is already in ver 2.1 of FirstSpot. If you want to divert a customer to your own shopping cart page, open the signup_form.php file under the FirstSpot\authserv directory, at line 17, you will see:

<input type="hidden" name="success_url" value=cart.php>

change the "cart.php" value to your preferred URL will do

For 2.2) please make sure the user id is carried to the shopping cart page

For 2.3) user id and the airtime going to purchase have to be posted to your payment gateway (usually as custom fields) so that you know which account and how many minutes to update after a successful payment.

For 2.4) this varies for different payment gateways. Our default one is for PayPal's IPN and yours may have its own standard. Please let us know if you need any help.

For 2.5) you can update FirstSpot's user database through ODBC function calls. This is a sample SQL statement that can easily increase the airtime of the user 'smarties' by 100 minutes:

UPDATE fsusr SET timeleft = timeleft + 100 where name = 'smarties'

This pretty much outlines the things you need to know. If you have specific questions that you would like to talk to us directly, please drop us an email at firstspot@patronsoft.com. We're here to help.

~ Patronsoft Limited ~