Cart to Payment Provider basics

[Snowgoat]

We are in the middle of choosing a new cart and/or payment service provider. Has anyone the patience to explain, in basic terms, what info a cart normally exports to the payment service provider?

I know it must depend on the cart, and, of course, the PSP, but could it be as simple as:

Total sales value / Date / Name of purchaser / Name of Supplier

Or have I got the wrong idea?

The reason I'm asking is because we want a parallel system where we link our invoices to the PSP for payment (either from the invoice or accompanying email) for institutions who need an invoice for supplies before payment, and can't use a cart in their purchase dept. It's a common system (as mentioned elsewhere) in the US (and some local authorities in the UK) and I'm trying to define the project for an estimate of the cost involved.

 

[kulture]

In simple terms, go to any e-commerce web site. Go to checkout, and everything you see there. Name. address, basket contents, etc

 

[MartCactus]

We are in the middle of choosing a new cart and/or payment service provider. Has anyone the patience to explain, in basic terms, what info a cart normally exports to the payment service provider?

I know it must depend on the cart, and, of course, the PSP, but could it be as simple as:

Total sales value / Date / Name of purchaser / Name of Supplier

Or have I got the wrong idea?

Generally it depends on the payment gateway more than the cart software - its the payment gateway that specify what the cart should pass.

In most cases they would have the above info passed to them. But most importantly they'll also request a unique transaction ID from the shopping cart. This is then passed back to the shopping cart once the transaction is complete.

This is critical, because the shopping cart will store much more info about each transaction
1) the id of the customer making it (assuming the software has customer accounts)
2) the full content of the order
3) any use of coupons
etc etc

Once the transaction is complete and the unique transaction ID is passed back to the shopping cart it can then do things like reduce stock levels (to account for the items just sold), send mails that the order is complete, etc.