The direct/integrated method of integration allows the customers card details to be taken directly on the merchant's website. This is the most flexible integration method technically, opening up the communication with the Cardsave gateway. Developers can create complex tasks within the merchant's website including subscription systems, implement recurring billing and provide functionality to refund orders amongst other applications.   

This integration method also lends itself to a high level experience for the customer as the payment section is integrated fully into the website. The look and feel of the payment page complies exactly to the website visual specification.

Network Environment

The live environment requires an SSL although the gateway can be implemented and tested without a SSL. The gateway requires port 4430 on the merchant’s server to be open for OUTGOING TCP please talk to the website hosting company if this port is not already open.

Coding

The example PHP code implementation will work in PHP 5.1.6 or above. SimpleXML and cURL are required to be installed and configured on the server for PHP implementations.

Classic ASP implementation requires a DLL to be installed in the Windows server system folder but we also have an alternative implementation using a mixture of Classic ASP and .NET. This code is available on request.

For more details about the requirements for specific languages please read the readme file in the code pack.

Polling Servers

You will see in the code examples that this code implements three gateway entry points. Cardsave have three servers in three different locations to allow for disruption of service either at the ISP where the server is housed or allowing for a complete server failure. Your code should implement the model in the example code polling all three servers if necessary. If server gw1 fails to respond server gw2 should then be poled and if that fails then gw3. This fall over architecture makes the gateway reliable but a little more work is required to implement this within the cart plug-in as the code needs to reside on the merchant’s server.

Below is the URL to the latest code packs. There are working examples for various languages. Please read the readme file for each language for more information about how to install and use the code examples.

We have fully working code examples for...
Classic ASP
Coldfusion
Java
.NET 1.1 VB/C#
.NET 2.0 VB/C#
PHP 5.1.2+

The Cardsave gateway API documentation is detailed in this document.