Making Platforms and Enabling Gateways

The biggest hindrance in doing business for a large population is the lack of an ‘unbiased’ payment gateway. So when Raseen publicized the fact that they were partnering with a local bank to resolve this issue, we immediately got in touch.

Raseen claims to offer the local market a powerful, feature rich payment engine which acts as a gateway between the merchant and the array of financial institutions involved in payment processing.  The gateway allows merchants with high throughput of transactions to quickly and easily support online transactions promptly. Nauman Ahmad, Director, Sales & Business Development at Raseen Technologies, explains, “The State Bank of Pakistan regulation requires such acquiring services to be provided by a bank. We have partnered with a leading bank in Pakistan who will be the acquirer bank in this payment processing payment ecosystem.”

Considering Raseen’s parent company is the same as Wateen and Bank Al Falah, it is a safe assumption that the gateway will probably be partnering with their internal networks before moving out to other organizations, which makes absolute commercial sense for the time being.

So there is a gateway available. How do companies integrate an RPG solution into their websites so that they can begin engaging in online transactions? “A number of ways. Sites can simply integrate our API, Application Programming Interface, which is free for various platforms. This method requires a company to install an API on its portal. If however, the company doesn’t have administrative access to its portal (e.g. they are hosting with a hosting provider), they can integrate with the Payment Gateway via another secure checkout method.”

How about liabilities and the burden of payment on the customer? Nauman says, “One of the biggest challenges merchants face in e-commerce business is if any fraudulent activities were shifted to them. Raseen’s service allows 3D-secure authentication programs which ensure merchants that the liability for charge backs associated with a fraudulent online transactions will switch from the merchant to the issuing bank.”

Cardholder authentication services rely on the customer’s use of a registered password or digital signature which is validated by the card issuing bank at the time of check out. The following, shares Nauman, is an overview of the process:

Customer enrollment: Customers must enroll in the authentication program with the card issuing bank. Note: some issuers are inviting cardholders to sign up while the customer is completing the purchase process. When these, and non-enrolled, cardholders visit an “authentication-savvy site”, the following purchase process applies.

Step One: Customer initiates check-out: Customer completes merchant’s check-out form as usual, supplying name, card type, card number, etc. and initiates check-out by clicking the “buy button.”

Step Two: System checks cardholder enrollment: When the “buy button” is clicked, a message is sent to the appropriate card association (Visa, MasterCard) to see if the cardholder is enrolled in the program.

Step Three: Authentication window is presented: If the cardholder is enrolled, a “pop-up” window, branded by the card issuing bank, is automatically displayed and prompts the customer to enter a password. If the cardholder is not enrolled no pop-up window appears (transaction proceeds as usual).

Step Four: Password is verified with bank: The password (or digital signature) is then sent to the card issuing bank and compared to those on file.

Step Five: Transaction is accepted or rejected: If the password matches, the transaction is “authenticated” and payment processing continues. If the password does not match, the cardholder is not authenticated and the transaction is presumed to be fraudulent. (A page of the merchant’s choosing is presented to the customer instructing them to contact customer service or similar follow-on actions.)

Customers who integrate payment gateways into their online presence will be able to provide their customers with a greater, more complete online experience. An obvious benefit associated with having access to an online payment system is the elimination of the middleman and direct management of the business.

Security and Workflow
The security of the transaction is of paramount importance to any vendor and Raseen is no exception. “The transaction data travels encrypted using SSL throughout the whole trip. We differentiate from many payment gateways in many ways. For merchant protection, for example, we would authenticate the user using Digital Certificates issued by a trusted Certification Authority (CA). Similarly, to protect them from liability of most of chargeback, we are introducing Pakistan’s first 3DSecure compliant Payment Gateway Service. Customers will enter their credit details only on a trusted, PCI-compliant Payment Gateway portal rather than the merchant portal. Finally, we require the CVV code for fraud prevention purposes which will protect customers.”

How a transaction takes place is also of grave concern to people using any payment gateway. Where will the information travel through and how vulnerable will it be? “The transaction through our gateway is as per industry norm. From the payment gateway, the information goes to an acquirer bank, card scheme and issuer bank for authorization.”

PCI Audits (previously covered by CIO Pakistan in Essential Technology) are audits conducted to verify vulnerabilities in websites. “Merchants don’t have access to credit card data and hence are not required to have their website audited for PCI compliance. However, as a best practice, they should certainly have their websites audited for vulnerabilities. Companies must adhere to these practices before commercial roll out of their services to customers.”

According to Nauman, the Telecom sector is interested to sell their products and services online but because of the State Bank regulation in place, cannot be conduct a financial transaction using airtime as currency. “Buying airtime using top up or scratch cards require a visit to a retail outlet. Once they enable online payment facility on their website, customers will be able to procure these online.”

For more details, please log onto www.raseen.ae