LinkSmart™ Documentation

   Contents

Also see documentation about the Secure Account Management System, the new Duplicate Transaction System, Smart Terminal and more from our Documents section.

LinkSmart Introduction

LinkSmart is a component of IntelliPay's real-time transaction processing system and is the most popular method of getting real- time payments into an ecommerce business. This is done by linking small to medium sized business web sites to IntelliPay's secure payment processing system with some simple HTML in your web page(s). Your web site can be located anywhere on the Internet and easily link to our transaction systems. As you will see, implementing LinkSmart into your web store is easy and fast.

In general, here's an overview of how the LinkSmart payment process works:

1. You link your ecommerce web site to LinkSmart by putting a few simple HTML form field tags in your final shopping page. This page details the sale to your customer, including all charges. The IntelliPay-related HTML in the page will contain some hidden fields, and possible other fields that your customer may fill in (but not the credit card number or other data requiring security).

2. When your customer clicks the "Pay Now" or "Continue" button in his browser the form input tags and the data you've programmed, some of which the customer will have filled into the text fields, will securely link the customer immediately to our LinkSmart payment page. This page will be pre-filled with the data your web page sent and your customer can now complete the payment data securely and get his payment approved and accepted.

The security is provided by the browser and our system. Browsers will automatically know to encrypt the data being sent to us, and our payment page will display the security symbol (the key or lock) in the browser so the customer will know the page/system is secure. The IntelliPay system will NOT accept a non-encrypted message.

3. When they press "Continue" we request a real-time authorization from your bank network, get the answer back, and serve your customer a secure receipt page. Or, if the transaction is declined or there is some other error, we serve a retry page encouraging the customer to try another credit card, verify the data entered or re-send the original data for another attempt.

Some basic features of LinkSmart are:

• IntelliPay serves the secure transaction pages for you. This saves you hundreds, if not thousands, in expensive items on your side including paying for a secure server, installing and maintaining it, maintaining security, firewalls, secure databases and more. When your site links the final purchase price and other data to our site, we serve our secure transaction, retry and receipt pages, collect the credit card data from your buyer, process the authorization in real-time, then return your customer to your web site. You can also configure simultaneous e-mail receipts to yourself or your fulfillment house and your customer. You can also configure a real-time background data stream to update local databases or other systems on your side.
• Even though LinkSmart is serving the secure payment and receipt pages for you, there is still an optional way for you to get a real-time datastream of the results of successful transactions back to a program or application that is running on your servers. This "Silent Post" is sent simultaneously with our serving the transaction receipt of approved transactions. It can be used for a wide variety of things on your side.
• Simple HTML form fields link your site to our payment system and secure payment pages.
• LinkSmart is portable. If you move your web site to another hosting company, LinkSmart (and all other IntelliPay features) moves with you.
• There are no IntelliPay programs or code to install, maintain, upgrade or configure that reside on your servers.
• Your logo and other basic page configurations can be customized in a limited way so your customers see your logo and basic color schemes on our payment pages.

Your Responsibility for Implementation

The responsibility for linking a web site to LinkSmart is with you or whoever is responsible for the web site in general. In most cases, LinkSmart implementation is simple and direct and should provide no problems for anyone with basic HTML knowledge. If you are unable to implement the HTML or other requirements for using IntelliPay or LinkSmart you should consult with an Internet web developer for assistance.

This document provides the data necessary to link a web site to LinkSmart. We provide some code examples that are helpful in getting started utilizing LinkSmart. The provided example code needs to be copied and pasted into your web site and adjusted with your IntelliPay account information in order to to sucessfully process transactions through your account.

IntelliPay support staff cannot be, and are not, responsible for ensuring that your web site is programmed properly for use with LinkSmart or other products or services. Any custom programming needs of a specific web site are likewise beyond the scope of this document, IntelliPay and it's staff. While we know many web designers, web developers and others, we won't make any specific recommendation to any single developer. We may be able to refer you to several for you to choose who you would like to use, but we can assume no responsibility for that developer's work.

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Who Should Use LinkSmart

Any merchant, web developer, ecommerce shopping cart or store programmer or anyone else that's wants or needs to implement IntelliPay's real-time payment processing so that IntelliPay serves the secure payment pages.

If you are developing an ecommerce system that will serve it's own secure payment pages, collect that data and talk to IntelliPay "in the background", LinkSmart is not the correct implementation. Instead, see ExpertLink for this type of functionality.

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First Steps

Initially, you should read this entire document before attempting to implement anything you learn. There are several choices to make during configuration and installation and you should decide which tools and features to use, and what configurations to set. In general, your overall steps probably should look like this:

1. Read this document, making notes for yourself of ideas or things to understand.
2. Log in to your Secure Account Management System (SAMS) and get to know it and it's settings (see the SAMS documentation for details).
3. Pay special attention to the LinkSmart configuration options in SAMS so that you can start to work out which fields to enable on our payment pages. Make any configuration changes you need to make in SAMS.
4. Install the HTML code in your web page(s) that will link to us. These pages will be the final page(s) your customer would see prior to giving his credit card info. It probably shows him his total price, shipping charges, taxes (if any), what he ordered, and any other data you want to show him. It also contains the HTML needed to link him to our secure payment system. This is the HTML linking described in this document.
5. Test your implementation(s). You might have more than one product or package that can be purchased so may have more than one page that a customer might end up on. Test each page to be sure it links successfully and the data you sent appears on our payment pages.
6. Get out your credit card and run a live transaction from each page you've created. Test the system fully. You can go into your Open Batch and Void those transactions (if you Void them before 8 p.m. Pacific Time), so they'll never settle.

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Special Considerations

How many products are you selling?
If you are selling more than 2 or 3 products or a shopper might buy more than one product, or shipping costs may vary, or sales taxes must be computed, then we recommend you get a shopping cart to contain your products and that supports the other business rules you have to deal with.

There are many fine shopping carts on the net. Prices range anywhere from Free to several thousand dollars. Free carts generally require a bit of expertise on your part. However, quite good carts can be purchased in the $195 - $500 range. Their functionality varies, but you will need one.

Your cart will need to have IntelliPay support built into it, or it will have to provide ways for you to make the changes, for it to work with our system. Contact our sales team for further information on compatible shopping carts.

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Your Merchant Account
You must have a merchant account to accept credit card payments. This account must be from a bank or other provider that offers accounts compatible with the private bank networks that IntelliPay supports. We support most of them so that part should be easy.

If you already have a merchant account, contact your IntelliPay representative to confirm whether we support it and whether it's suitable for Internet-based transactions.

If you don't have a merchant account, your IntelliPay rep can refer you to several so you can make the best deal you can. However, you should also read our Special Report, "About Merchant Accounts" before you shop for these accounts.

IntelliPay works very hard to be "processor neutral", which means that if you change merchant account providers in a way that also changes which bank network your provider uses, IntelliPay systems still behave the same way to your web site and applications. We still take advantage of every feature every bank network offers, but present them to you and your systems in the same ways. This makes IntelliPay completely portable for you.

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About AVS
AVS (the "Address Verification System") is a system run by the card associations (Visa and MasterCard) that compares the billing address given by your customer to the customer's address on file in his credit card account. It verifies the street address number and the zip code to those two numbers in the cardholder's file. If either is different, the AVS system returns a different AVS score to IntelliPay, and we return that score to you and log it in your batch. This non-perfect score is often called a "mis-match".

AVS is an important component in fraud detection. If the person using the card number does not know the correct address data and enters wrong data the AVS score will reflect it. Because it's so important, your Internet-based merchant account from your bank requires that AVS be run on every transaction. If you don't run AVS, or on transactions where AVS is not possible, your merchant account bank will charge you additional fees (non-qualified rates). IntelliPay helps save you money and increases your security against some fraudulent transactions by running AVS requests for you automatically.

AVS is only available for credit cards issued in the United States. This also means that transactions from your non-U.S. customer's shopping with credit cards will result in additional fee(s) on your merchant account statement.

However, AVS is not always 100% accurate. One failing can be that American's move their households and don't always update their billing addresses in a timely manner.

Transactions will not be declined by the credit card systems because of an AVS mismatch. The card associations let you make this decision. You can accept an approved transaction that has AVS mis-matches and there can be many reasons to do so. You can also elect to reject all approved transactions because of AVS mis-matches.

IntelliPay gives you several ways to address the AVS issues, and possibly save you money by allowing you to automate how IntelliPay deals with AVS on your behalf. You can allow it to be a completely manual process where you see the AVS score in the e-mail receipts and go to your Open Batch and decide to call the customer, or let it settle normally or Void the transaction.

You can also take advantage of IntelliPay's innovative HTML tags to tell us how to deal with AVS mis-matches, or tell us what the only acceptable AVS score is to you. See the tags "REJECTIFAVSNOT" and "REJECTAVSMISMATCH". Also read our AVS document in our documentation section.

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IntelliPay's New Duplicate Transaction System
As a direct response to needs of some of our merchant customers, IntelliPay developed the Duplicate Transaction System (DTS). The DTS detects duplicate transaction attempts from your web site and responds based on rules you customize.

There are many reasons duplicate attempts can happen on the Internet, some intentional and some accidental. Some merchants who offer online fulfillment in real-time, such as software downloads, credit to accounts and others, may also be prone to being victimized by fraudulent credit card attempts.

See our DTS documentation for details and how you can use DTS to your advantage. DTS is fully automated, but there are also methods for you to define what a duplicate actually is to you. Does a dupe mean card number and the amount, or just the card number? Also, we let you define how long before a duplicate attempt is OK, since the same cardholder may want to buy the same thing within your defined duplicate checking time window. Also see the LinkSmart field "DUPEOK".

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About Security and Credit Card Data on the Internet
If you have your own secure server and are keeping customer data on your machines, you must review your security issues. It is vital that you understand your risks related to credit card data on your web site. You can review more information about this topic in our Special Reports section.

All communications to IntelliPay's servers must be encrypted with minimally SSL 40 bit. Using LinkSmart properly will cause your shopper's browsers to encrypt data from our payment pages back to our payment systems. We use industry standard security, including the more secure 128-bit SSL if the shoppers browser is configured for it.

Our data is fully secured behind 24 hour monitored firewalls and other high-level security precautions.

However, we are concerned with data security on your side also. Please read the various documents in our Reports section, and check out other links we've provided on this issue.

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How Declined Transactions are Handled by LinkSmart
If an authorization request is declined by the bank network, LinkSmart replies to your customer with a "retry" page. We indicate the reason for the decline and offer your buyer another payment page allowing him/her to try again with a different payment card. His choices will be all the card types you are approved for with your merchant account provider that have been installed in your IntelliPay account.

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Using LinkSmart

Implementation Goals
To successfully install LinkSmart in your online store you must end up with HTML form(s) that contain the form field tags needed to start a LinkSmart session. When your customer clicks the "Pay Now" or "Continue" button in his browser the form fields and the data you've programmed, some of which the customer will have filled into the text fields, will securely link the customer immediately to our LinkSmart payment page. This page will be pre-filled with the data your web page sent and your customer can now complete the payment data securely and get his payment approved and accepted.

The security is provided both by his browser and our system. Browsers will automatically know to encrypt the data being sent to us, and our payment page will cause the display of the security symbol (the key or lock) in his browser so he'll know he's using a secure system.

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What Your Customer Experiences

Step 1: Customer reviews his total purchase information on your final shopping page and presses the "Continue" button you have programmed. This passes the transaction information to the the IntelliPay gateway.

Step 2: The IntelliPay secure payment page with your logo is displayed for the customer to enter their card payment information. The form will have pre filled with the data sent by your final shopping page. Customer completes needed information and presses the "Submit" button to receive a real-time response to the transaction (Approval or Decline).

Step 3: IntelliPay serves the customer a receipt page showing the data that was submitted to IntelliPay, along with the approval code for the transaction. It is recommended that the customer prints the receipt for record keeping purposes. The customer would then press the continue button on the receipt page to be returned to the URL that has been configured within the edit configuration for your IntelliPay account.

3b: IntelliPay will send a e-mail receipt to the merchant and the customer with the transaction information that is contained within the page receipt when a transaction is successfully processed. The e-mail receipt feature can be enabled and disabled from within the edit configuration of the IntelliPay account. It is recommended that the merchant keep the receipts enabled within their account for additional record keeping and transaction notification to both the merchant and the customer.

3c: If the transaction is declined or there is another error in the customer transaction, IntelliPay will display a retry page containing further information with directions to complete the process.

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Configuring LinkSmart in Your Secure Account Management System (SAMS)

In order to coordinate the fields you use in your final page with LinkSmart, you'll configure the fields you want LinkSmart to recognize as Required and / or Editable. Likewise, you configure the header and footer text for the e-mail receipts as well as some text that appears on the web page receipts. Also configurable is the return URL if you are using the Silent Post feature, invoice numbering scheme, our Duplicate Transaction System if your account supports it, as well as other items. See the SAMS documentation for details about each of the settings.

If you have configured a field as Required but you don't send the data with your HTML form fields the IntelliPay system will provide a message at the top of the page indicating that the field is required and data must be entered.

To add your logo to our payment pages you can login to your account, go into the edit configuation area and upload the logo image files to your account.

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Requirements for Your Web Site

This assumes you do not have a secure server and your web site must do the following things at the very minimum in order to be linked properly with IntelliPay LinkSmart's secure payment form:

Your site must produce a total transaction amount to be authorized by the IntelliPay Payment Gateway. The code samples below do not demonstrate how to calculate totals. Calculating a total amount is not part of the IntelliPay Payment Gateway. Totals can be "hard coded" into your web pages, calculated by a shopping cart on your site, or calculated by script programming on your site.

Your website must pass the following fields with data in order to successfully process a transaction:

1. The total dollar amount passed in the AMOUNT field.
2. Your IntelliPay login name passed in the LOGIN field.
3. Your IntelliPay LinkSmart password passed in the PASSWORD field.
4. RECEIPTFORMAT value set to "LinkSmartReceiptPage".
5. PAYMENTPAGE value set to "CreditCardPaymentPage".

Any other fields, such as invoice, customer ID, name, address, e-mail, etc. that are defined as "required" within your edit configuration section of your IntelliPay account would need to be sent with the rest of the information above. Some information the customer can enter. Other fields must be sent by you at the time the transaction information is sent to the IntelliPay system. Examples of these are: AMOUNT, INVOICE, LOGIN, PASSWORD and others.

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Allowed Fields

The following fields can be passed to IntelliPay LinkSmart from your web site. And field names must be sent exactly as they are named below. More data about each field can be found later in the section " INTELLIPAY LINKSMART FIELD DEFINITIONS." An asterisk "*" denotes fields required by the IntelliPay Payment Gateway. You may require other fields in your configuration.

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Example 1 — Bare Minimum Requirements

This example of HTML code shows the minimum required fields need to successfully link to IntelliPay LinkSmart for a credit card transaction. Note that text field size values do not necessarily represent the actual IntelliPay Payment Gateway field size.

(Note: Field names and values are case sensitive)

<form method="POST" action="https://www.intellipay.net/LinkSmart/">
<input type="hidden" name="LOGIN" value="Login name">
<input type="hidden" name="PASSWORD" value="LinkSmart password">
<input type="hidden" name="PAYMENTPAGE" value="CreditCardPaymentPage">
<input type="hidden" name="RECEIPTFORMAT" value="LinkSmartReceiptPage">
<input type="hidden" name="AMOUNT" value="properly formatted total here">
<input type="submit" value="Click Here for Secure Payment Form">
</form>

The result of the above HTML snippet is a simple web page form with a button that is programmed to pass a total transaction amount to IntelliPay LinkSmart's secure payment form. Obviously this represents the barest minimum requirements with no description, Customer ID, or Invoice — fields that are likely to be desired. Once the customer arrives on the IntelliPay LinkSmart payment page they will be prompted for further information such as name, address, credit card information and more. Your configuration settings will affect what the customer is prompted for or required to enter.

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Example 2 — Suggested Minimum Requirements

This sample code shows some suggested minimum data for a credit card transaction.

(Note: Field names and values are case sensitive)

<form method="POST" action="https://www.intellipay.net/LinkSmart/">
<input type="hidden" name="LOGIN" value="Login name ">
<input type="hidden" name="PASSWORD" value="LinkSmart password">
<input type="hidden" name="PAYMENTPAGE" value="CreditCardPaymentPage">
<input type="hidden" name="RECEIPTFORMAT" value="LinkSmartReceiptPage">
<input type="hidden" name="INVOICE" value="your invoice number here">
<input type="hidden" name="AMOUNT" value="properly formatted total here">
<input type="hidden" name="DESCRIPTION" value="order description here">
<input type="hidden" name="CUSTID" value="your customer ID here">
<input type="submit" value="Click Here for Secure Payment Form">
</form>

This example shows additional data being passed to IntelliPay LinkSmart from your web site. INVOICE, CUSTID, and DESCRIPTION have been added. Note that the IntelliPay Payment Gateway can generate invoice numbers for you, which are required by some Card Associations, such as Visa.

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Example 3 — Using Your Own HTML Form and a Custom USER1 Field

The sample shows one method of using your own form to gather some of the information as well as a custom field prior to linking to IntelliPay LinkSmart. Remember, IntelliPay LinkSmart field names must be named and spelled correctly and they are case sensitive. No HTML page formatting for making an attractive page is shown.

(Note: Field names and values are case sensitive)

<Form method="POST" action="https://www.intellipay.net/LinkSmart/">
<input type="hidden" name="LOGIN" value="Login name ">
<input type="hidden" name="PASSWORD" value="LinkSmart password">
<input type="hidden" name="PAYMENTPAGE" value="CreditCardPaymentPage">
<input type="hidden" name="RECEIPTFORMAT" value="LinkSmartReceiptPage">
<input type="hidden" name="INVOICE" value="your invoice number here">
<input type="hidden" name="AMOUNT" value="properly formatted total here">
<input type="hidden" name="DESCRIPTION" value="order description here">
<input type="hidden" name="CUSTID" value="your customer ID here">
Name: <input type="text" name="NAME" size="40" maxlength="40">
Address: <input type="text" name=ADDRESS" size="40" maxlength="40">
City: <input type="text" name="CITY" size="40" maxlength="40">
State: Enter State/Province:<select name="REGIONCODE" size="1">
<option value="VI">(U.S.) Virgin Islands</option>
<option value="AL">Alabama</option>
<option value="AK">Alaska</option>
<option value="AZ">Arizona</option>
<option value="AR">Arkansas</option>
<option value="CA">California</option>
<option value="CO">Colorado</option>
<option value="CT">Connecticut</option>
<option value="DE">Delaware</option>
<option value="DC">District of Columbia</option>
<option value="FL">Florida</option>
<option value="GA">Georgia</option>
<option value="HI">Hawaii</option>
<option value="ID">Idaho</option>
<option value="IL">Illinois</option>
<option value="IN">Indiana</option>
<option value="IA">Iowa</option>
<option value="KS">Kansas</option>
<option value="KY">Kentucky</option>
<option value="LA">Louisiana</option>
<option value="ME">Maine</option>
<option value="MD">Maryland</option>
<option value="MA">Massachusetts</option>
<option value="MI">Michigan</option>
<option value="MN">Minnesota</option>
<option value="MS">Mississippi</option>
<option value="MO">Missouri</option>
<option value="MT">Montana</option>
<option value="NE">Nebraska</option>
<option value="NV">Nevada</option>
<option value="NH">New Hampshire</option>
<option value="NJ">New Jersey</option>
<option value="NM">New Mexico</option>
<option value="NY">New York</option>
<option value="NC">North Carolina</option>
<option value="ND">North Dakota</option>
<option value="OH">Ohio</option>
<option value="OK">Oklahoma</option>
<option value="OR">Oregon</option>
<option value="PA">Pennsylvania</option>
<option value="PR">Puerto Rico</option>
<option value="RI">Rhode Island</option>
<option value="SC">South Carolina</option>
<option value="SD">South Dakota</option>
<option value="TN">Tennessee</option>
<option value="TX">Texas</option>
<option value="AA">U.S. Military Bases</option>
<option value="AP">U.S. Military Bases</option>
<option value="AE">U.S. Military Bases</option>
<option value="UT" selected>Utah</option>
<option value="VT">Vermont</option>
<option value="VA">Virginia</option>
<option value="WA">Washington</option>
<option value="WV">West Virginia</option>
<option value="WI">Wisconsin</option>
<option value="WY">Wyoming</option>
<option value="AB">Alberta</option>
<option value="BC">British Columbia</option>
<option value="MB">Manitoba</option>
<option value="NB">New Brunswick</option>
<option value="NF">Newfoundland</option>
<option value="NT">Northwest Territories</option>
<option value="NS">Nova Scotia</option>
<option value="ON">Ontario</option>
<option value="PE">Prince Edward Island</option>
<option value="QC">Quebec</option>
<option value="SK">Saskatchewan</option>
<option value="YT">Yukon Territory</option>
<option value="ZZ">[Other - Specify Below]</option>
<option value="AS">American Samoa</option>
<option value="FM">Federated States of Micronesia</option>
<option value="GU">Guam</option>
<option value="MH">Marshall Islands</option>
<option value="MP">Northern Mariana Islands</option>
<option value="PW">Palau</option></select>
ZIP: <input type="text" name="ZIP" size="40" maxlength="40">
E-mail Address: <input type="text" name="EMAIL" size="40" maxlength="40">
Enter Special Instructions: <input type="text" name="USER1" size="50">
<input type="submit" value="Click Here for Secure Payment Form">
</form>

The result of the above HTML sample is a web page form with seven visible fields to gather information from a customer and pass it to IntelliPay LinkSmart by pressing the button. Once arriving on IntelliPay LinkSmart's payment page the appropriate information on the payment form will already be filled in and the customer will be prompted for further data. Even though you have passed data to IntelliPay LinkSmart and those fields will now be pre-filled with the passed data, the customer may still be able to edit these same fields on the IntelliPay LinkSmart page so they can correct any errors, etc. It is possible to prevent a customer from editing data passed to a field on the IntelliPay LinkSmart payment page in your IntelliPay SAMS configuration.

(Note: If you are gathering data from your customers that is in any way sensitive or needs confidential handling you should be using a secure server to serve secure web pages for customer input.)

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Customer Return Methods

When LinkSmart creates and serves the receipt page to the customer, it puts one of the following on the bottom of the receipt page. This is how your customer can return to your web site by taking to the page of your choice.

A Hyperlink - You must set Return URL Method and Receipt page hyperlink text in "Edit Configuration" in SAMS.

A Button -  You must set "Return URL Method" and Receipt page button text in "Edit Configuration" in SAMS.

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Silent HTTP POST from IntelliPay LinkSmart

This method moves data from the IntelliPay Payment Gateway server back to your web server. The IntelliPay Payment Gateway server will "impersonate" a browser and cause a POST back to your web site automatically each time a transaction is submitted. This is called a "silent" POST because the transaction data is returned to your site "silently", without any customer knowledge or interaction. On the Edit Configuration page, you set the silent POST target URL in the field "Silent POST Script URL". Note that if from your final store page you send the tag SILENTPOSTURL="sometargetURL", this new URL will override any setting in the SAMS silent post setting.

When we serve a receipt page, then silent POST could be used to return transaction data to you. The IntelliPay LinkSmart Receipt Page is displayed after the silent POST takes place.

Silent POST can also be used to send transaction data to another site such as a fulfillment company or other relevant destination.

The silent POST method may not be useful if you are using your own secure server and are receiving transaction data through ExpertLink.

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What Fields and Values Are POSTed by IntelliPay LinkSmart

Only certain fields are POSTed to your web server. Those fields are:

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LinkSmart Field Definitions

(Note: Field Names and values are case sensitive. Field names must be sent to the IntelliPay system in upper case. Field values must have upper/lower case as indicated below.)

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