HSBC CPI
June 15, 2006 | In Development |I’ve just completed a e-commerce site integration using HSBC’s online card payment system.
This process was not as easy as it should have been. HSBC provide much documentation on how this should be done, what one needs to keep transactions safe, and how one should administer an online store. However, what they do not do is provide much details on how the developer should develop their site.
There is an integration guide included in this information, but frankly it is as if it was written by the junior team member in the last 10 minutes, and they didn’t really know how it was supposed to work.
The document misses some pretty basic information, that requires either trial and error, or numerous phone calls to their support line. I have to say though, that the support people were rather good and answered all my queries
Things that were omitted include:
- the fact that you need to sent the data in a certain order to the HSBC server.
- the meaning of errors codes and descriptions, somewhat important for debugging.
- details of testing process, or even some mention of the fact that there are test card details available, but no addresses.