With systems for managing real-time credit-card transactions (RediCharge), check payments (RediCheck) and EFT payment transfers (RediEFT), iTransact offers a range of affordable services for medium-sized and larger e-commerce Web sites, although smaller sites will probably find that iTransact is too expensive.
The iTransact service runs on the central iTransact servers. On your end, you don''t special software, a special terminal, or a special Web server; you can transmit secure information to iTransact from any Web server supporting SSL and any Web page. This means that iTransact can be seamlessly added to any Web site with an existing order form and product information, or it can be easily included as part of a new e-commerce site. You can even choose the credit-card network to manage the transactions (Cardservice, CES, FDC/FDR, FDMS, GPS, Lynk Systems Nabanco, Nova Paymentech, or Visanet). All of the services listed here are available once you register with iTransact.
The RegiCharge process is simple. First, as part of a shopping cart (which iTransact will provide you free of charge) you must set up an online order form containing fields for contact data (name, address, e-mail address) and credit-card information (card number, name of cardholder, expiration date). This form is then sent via secure SSL connection to iTransact, which processes the order in real time. After the order has been approved, iTransact sends an online authorization to the user via your server, and an e-mail confirmation is sent to both you and the customer. Your merchant-banking account receives the proceeds from the transaction.
The other way to handle a credit-card transaction, should a customer not want to send credit-card information over the Internet, is that an order can be entered manually by merchants via a Web interface after the customer has called in or faxed the information. In addition, the same Web interface can be used to issue online credits to customer accounts.
The RediCheck process is similarly simple. First, as part of a shopping cart (which iTransact will provide you, free of charge) you must set up an online order form containing fields for contact data (name, address, e-mail address) and check information (account number, bank name). This form is then sent via secure SSL connection to iTransact, which verifies the account information against a national database.
After the order has been approved, iTransact sends an e-mail confirmation to both you and the customer, and you''ll also receive a daily e-mail report (in a tab-delimited format, which can be imported into most accounting and spreadsheet packages) showing customer information for each order. iTransact then prints a paper check drawn on your customer''s account and either deposits the check in your account or mails it to you for deposit. The charge is 2 percent of the transaction amount, with a minimum of 25 cents. Customers must be drawing on a U.S. bank and paying with U.S. dollars.
If you''re too impatient to wait for a paper check, you''ll want to choose RediEFT to enact electronic-fund transfers. (You''ll need to choose between the two; they can''t be used concurrently.) RediEFT transfers funds from your customer''s checking account to your checking account, but it''s more expensive than RediCheck, as you''ll need to pay an EFT service additional
fees. Otherwise, the charge is 2 percent of the transaction amount, with a minimum of 25 cents, and customers must be drawing on a U.S. bank and paying with U.S. dollars.
iTransact customers are also offered free access to RediCart. RediCart is a Perl-based shopping cart designed to work directly with RediCharge, RediCheck, and RediEFT to easily enable real-time transactions. You''ll need Perl 5 (or better) installed on your Web server, which also needs to support CGI (which is true of almost every Web server on the market).
The shopping cart is actually quite sophisticated, offering many shipping charge options (charging by quantity, weight, or price) and various tax options (including the ability to set different rates in different states).
The prices for iTransact are middle of the road. Registration fees can either be purchased (for $395) or leased over 48 months for either $39.95 per month (which does not include a merchant-account application fee) or $49.95 per month (which includes a merchant-account application fee). The leasing fees seem exorbitant, running either $1,917.60 or $2,397.60 over a four-year lease. Those who purchase a registration fee must pay the aforementioned transaction fees or
$40 per month, whichever is greater, and merchant-account fees. (This is couched in somewhat misleading terms by iTransact, since you would need 400 credit-card transactions per month to meet your $40 minimum, which makes it an expensive service for smaller e-commerce sites.) However, those leasing the service receive up to 1,800 transactions per year, after which each transaction costs $.10 apiece.
While the pricing should cause smaller e-commerce sites to do some spreadsheet calculations to see how affordable it is, medium-sized and large e-commerce sites will find that iTransact''s fees are quite affordable when working on a larger scale.
With the variety of services and a commitment to security and prompt transactions, iTransact is an attractive tool for enabling real-time credit-card transactions.
Pros: Supports many different credit-card networks; can also be used to process checks; Web interface makes
management easier; order forms easy to link to secure servers.
Cons: Expensive for smaller sites with a limited number of transactions.
Reviewed by: Kevin Reichard
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