Overview

Introduction

The Hosted Integration method makes it easy to add secure payment processing to your e-commerce business, using our Hosted Payment Fields. You can use this method if you do not want to collect and store cardholder data.

For greater control over the customisation of the payment page, our Gateway offers the use of Hosted Payment Fields, where only the individual input fields collecting the sensitive cardholder data are hosted by the Gateway while the remainder of the payment form is provided by your website. These Hosted Payment Fields fit seamlessly into your payment page and can be styled to match your payment fields. When your payment form is submitted to your server, the Gateway will return a payment token representing the sensitive card data it collected and your webserver can then use the direct api integration to process the payment without ever being in contact with the collected cardholder data.

By using the direct integration you are involved in the EMV 3D-Secure flow, adding a layer of complexity to the integration but giving you more control over the checkout process.

The Hosted payment fields integration method supports digital wallets like Google Pay and Apple Pay.

Below is an example of what an hosted payment fields integration can look like, the UI is fully in your control, we only take care of swapping the content of the card number and CVV with a token so you are never touching sensitive card data:

Security and Compliance

If you use Hosted Payment Fields with the Direct or Batch Integrations, then your webserver does not need an SSL certificate and you require the lowest level of PCI DSS compliance.

The Gateway will make transaction details available for a maximum period of 13 months. Your acquirer may hold information for a different period of time.

Authentication

You will need the following information to integrate with the Gateway which will be provided during onboarding:

Name	Description
Merchant Account ID	Your unique Merchant Account ID.
Integration URL	Your unique URL to use the Hosted Payment Fields Integration.

You will be provided with unique production and test Merchant Account IDs during the onboarding process. You will also be provided with the integration URL.

All requests must specify which merchant account they are for, using the merchantID request field. In addition to this, the following security measures can be used:

Password authentication

A password can be configured for each Merchant Account. This password must then be sent in the merchantPwd field in each request. If an incorrect password is received by the Gateway, then the transaction will be aborted and an error response is returned.

danger

Use of a password is discouraged in any integration where the transaction is posted from a form in the client browser as the password may appear in plain text in code.

Message signing

A signing secret phrase can be configured for each merchant account. When configured, each request will need to be ‘signed’ by providing a signature field containing a hash generated from the combination of the serialised request and this signing secret phrase. On receipt, the Gateway will then re-generate the hash and compare it with the one sent. If the two hashes are different then the request received must not be the same as the one sent and so the contents must have been tampered with and the transaction will be aborted and an error response is returned.

The Gateway will also return the hash of the response message in the returned signature field, allowing you to create your own hash of the response (minus the signature field) and verify that the hashes match. The data POSTed to any callback URL will also be signed. See signature calculation for information on how to create the hash.

Message signing maybe mandatory on some Merchant Accounts

Allowed IP addresses

You can configure a list of allowed IP addresses. Two different address lists can be configured, one for standard requests, such as sales; and one for advanced requests, such as refunds and cancellations. If a request is received from an address other than those configured, then it will be aborted and an error response is returned.

HTTP Requests

A request can be sent to the Gateway by submitting a HTTP POST request to the integration URL provided.

The request should have a Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded HTTP header and the request should be name, value pairs URL encoded as per RFC 1738. Complex fields consisting of single or multidimensional records or arrays must be formatted as per the PHP http_build_query method using square brackets to represent multiple dimensions. The sub-field names must be numeric or alphanumeric only, alphanumeric fields must not start with a numeric. Any square brackets around the nested field names should be URL encoded, [ as %5B and ] as %5D.

The following example request contains a complex items field consisting of an array of records representing the following table of purchased items.

Description	Quantity	Amount
Newspaper	1	110
Chocolate bar	3	249
Carrier bag	1	10

For example, a request would be URL encoded as: merchantID=100001&action=SALE&type=1&amount=1001¤cyCode=826&countryCode=826&transactionUnique=55f6db1c81d95&orderRef=Test+purchase&customerPostCode=NN17+8YG&responseCode=0&responseMessage=AUTHCODE%3A350333&state=captured&xref=15091702MG47WN32MM88LPK&cardNumber=4929+4212+3460+0821&cardExpiryDate=1215&items%5B0%5D%5Bdescription%5D=Newspaper&items%5B0%5D%5Bquantity%5D=1&items%5B0%5D%5Bamount%5D=110&items%5B1%5D%5Bdescription%5D=Chocolate+bar&items%5B1%5D%5Bquantity%5D=3&items%5B1%5D%5Bamount%5D=249&items%5B2%5D%5Bdescription%5D=Carrier+bag&items%5B2%5D%5Bquantity%5D=1&items%5B2%5D%5Bamount%5D=1

Please note that the field and sub-field names must be alphanumeric only and are cAsE sEnSiTiVe. Root integration fields must be numeric only and alphanumeric fields must not start with a numeric.

The response will use the same URL encoding and return the request fields in addition to any dedicated response field. If the request contains a field that is also intended as a response field, then any incoming request value will be overwritten by the correct response value.

The Gateway may add new request and response fields at any time and so your integration must take care not to send request fields that may conflict with future Gateway fields and be able to ignore response fields which it doesn’t yet understand.

Hosted Payment Fields HTTP Requests

When using the Hosted Payment Fields Integration, the response will be received in the same URL encoded format, unless a redirectURL field is provided.

If a redirectURL field is provided, then the response will be a HTML page designed to redirect a browser to the URL provided, using a HTTP POST request containing the response. This allows you to collect the cardholder’s payment details on your own server, using a HTML form which POSTs to the Direct Integration, which then effectively POSTs the results back to this URL your webserver, where you can display the transaction outcome.

All request fields will be returned in the response and a Merchant may add custom request fields. If the request contains a field that is also intended as a response field, then any incoming request value will be overwritten by the correct response value.

Handling Errors

When the Gateway is uncontactable due to a communications error, or problem with the internet connection, you may receive a HTTP status code in the 500 to 599 range. In this situation, you may want to retry the transaction. If you do choose to retry a transaction, then we recommend that you perform a limited number of attempts with an increasing delay between each attempt.

If the Gateway is unavailable during a scheduled maintenance period, you will receive a HTTP status code of 503 ‘Service Temporarily Unavailable’. In this situation, you should retry the transaction after the scheduled maintenance period has expired. You will be notified of the times and durations of any such scheduled maintenance periods in advance, by email, and given a time when transactions can be reattempted.

If you are experiencing these errors, then we recommend you consider the following steps as appropriate for the integration method being used:

• Ensure the request is being sent to HTTPS and not HTTP. HTTP is not supported and is not redirected.
• Send transactions sequentially rather than concurrently.
• Configure your integration code with try/catch loops around individual transactions to determine whether they were successful or not and retry if required, based on the return code or HTTP status returned.
• Configure the integration so that if one transaction fails, the entire batch does not stop at that point – ie log the failure to be checked and then skip to the next transaction rather than stopping entirely.

Redirect URL

The redirectURL request field is used to provide the URL of a webpage on your server.

For the Hosted Payment Fields integration, this allows you to collect the Customer’s payment details on your own server using a HTML form that you design, but which POSTs directly to the Gateway rather than your own server and thus not exposing any sensitive card data to your server. The Gateway will respond to the HTML form submission with a request to Customer’s browser to redirect to this URL allowing you to continue the payment journey on your website. The URL will be loaded using a HTTP GET request containing transaction response data allowing you to tailor the journey depending on the outcome of the transaction. This usage is not recommended as it makes it harder to sign the message.

The redirectURL is optional for the Hosted Payment Fields integration. it must be a fully qualified URL, containing at least the scheme and host components.

It is strongly recommended that the response data sent to the redirectURL be used to display a payment confirmation page only and not used to update your backend systems. The Customer may close their browser before the redirection happens resulting in you never receiving this data. Please use the callbackURL if you need to update your backend systems.

Callback URL

The callbackURL request field allows you optionally to request that the Gateway sends a copy of the response to an alternative URL. In this case, each response will then be POSTed to this URL in addition to the normal response. This allows you to specify a URL on a secure shopping cart or backend order processing system, which will then fulfil any order associated with the transaction. The callbackURL must be a fully qualified URL, containing at least the scheme and host components.

Field Formats

Most integration field values are either numerical or textual, and either free format or from a range of predetermined values. Some field values are records or arrays of records.

Unless otherwise stated, numerical values are whole integer values with no decimal points. Textual values should use the UTF-8 character set and will be automatically truncated if too long, unless stated otherwise in the field’s description. Textual values may be transliterated when sending to third parties such as Acquirers but the original value is stored by Gateway.

Field values should use the following formats unless otherwise stated in the field’s description:

Field Type	Value Format
Monetary Amounts	Either major currency units by providing a value that includes a single decimal point such as ’10.99’; or in minor currency units by providing a value that contains no decimal points such as ‘1099’.
Timestamps	Date in the format ‘YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS’
Dates	Date in the format ‘YYYY-MM-DD’
Country Codes	Either the ISO-3166-1 2-letter, 3-letter or 3-digit code.
Currency Codes	Either the ISO-4217 3-letter or 3-digit code.
Records	Records can be provided using the [Y] notation, where Y is the record’s sub-field name. Records can be nested to any depth, that is a sub-field’s value can be another record. Arrays can be provided by using numeric sub-fields starting with the value 0 and incrementing by 1. For example: to send a value for the sub-field Z, of the sub-field Y in the integration field X, use the field name X[Y][Z]; however, to send a value for the sub-field Z in the fourth record for integration field X, then use the field name X[4][Z] etc. Boolean values must be sent as the words ‘true’ or ‘false’.
Serialised Records	Certain fields allow records to be sent as JSON or URL serialised strings. If the first character of the serialised string is ‘{‘, then the string is assumed to be in JSON format with any boolean values sent as their JSON equivalents, all other strings will be assumed to be application/x-www-form-urlencoded format with any boolean values sent as the words ‘true’ or ‘false’.

Note: Record format is useful when posting sub-fields directly from individual field in a HTML FORM. However, unlike the main integration fields, a record’s sub-fields are not sorted when constructing the signature and are processed in the order received. Serialised record format can overcome any problems caused by the sub-fields of a record being received in a different order to that used when generating the signature. Not all fields using the record format also support the serialised record format especially the threeDSRequest, threeDSResponse, checkoutRequest, checkoutResponse and the purchase items field.

Boolean values cannot be represented when using the record format or the application/x-www-form-urlencoded serialised record format and the words ‘true’ and ‘false’ must be used. The JSON serialised record format does not have this restriction and a JSON boolean can be used.