CyberCash

One of the key components of an e-commerce web site is credit card
processing capabilities. One such credit card processing service,
that is supported by PHP, is
CashRegister,
from CyberCash. The CashRegister
service enables merchants to make financial transactions over the
Internet in real-time. CashRegister works by first you (the merchant)
receiving an order request from a customer and sending an authorization
request to the CashRegister server. Next the CashRegister server returns
either an approved or declined message back to you. If the authorization
is approved the order request is completed and the customer receives
their goods or services. Communications are encrypted using SSL and
Triple DES at the various stages in the process. For a more detailed
overview check out the
CyberCash web site.

The interface to CyberCash that we will be using is in this article
is CyberClass. CyberClass was developed by myself and is an adaptation
and enhancement to the original CyberLib written by Timothy Whitfield.
CyberClass is a duplication of CyberCash’s standard API, is
object-oriented and includes automatic configuration.

If you decide that you want to use the CashRegister as a credit card payment solution, the first step
is to register at the New Merchant CashRegister
Registration. Once you have successfully registered you will have received a user name, password and
Merchant ID. Next you will need to get your private encryption key, which are used to encrypt your
communications. To do so, go to the Merchant Control Panel,
then the Merchant Key Exchange and get your encryption keys.