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UniPayGateway

July 2, 2014
Written by
James Davis
Written by James Davis
Senior Technical Writer at United Thinkers

Author of the Paylosophy blog, a veteran writer, and a stock analyst with extensive knowledge and experience in the financial services industry that allows me to cover the latest payment industry news, developments, and insights.

My works have been cited across media and payment blogs. I do my best to help businesses make the most efficient financial decisions that can positively and significantly improve their business growth.

Whether you are a seasoned investor or just starting out in the world of payments, my writing is designed to be accessible to everyone and help people navigate the complex world of payments. So if you want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and insights in the payment industry, be sure to check out Paylosophy and my published works.

Reviewed by
Kathrine Pensatori
Product Specialist at United Thinkers

Product specialist with more than 10 years of experience in the Payment Processing Industry. I help payment facilitators and PSPs solve their various payment processing issues. On a regular basis, I work with a team of knowledgeable technical people in the space, and I am passionate about finding creative solutions to the challenges presented by the Payments Industry.

I would be happy to help with any questions you might have regarding credit card payment processing, merchant services, EMV certifications, the various ways of becoming a payment facilitator or a payment platform, as well as any other Payment Industry related issues you might be struggling with. Feel free to follow me on Quora, and don’t hesitate to send me links to the specific Quora questions you would like me to answer.

Read and Connection Timeout Handling

Sometimes transaction processing can become problematic or even impossible due to loss of connection between merchant’s system and the processor’s (or bank’s) server (so-called timeouts), or due to some other errors.

Timeouts, in their turn are caused either by connectivity problems or by the fact that, although a transaction is submitted and, possibly, approved, the response from the processor does not get through. The first type of timeouts is referred to as #connectiontimeouts, while the second type is often called read timeouts.

In order to be able to handle connection timeouts, the merchant needs to have several URLs reserved for transaction submission. If transactions cannot be submitted through any of the URLs reserved for connection with the processor, then these transactions cannot be processed.

As for read timeouts handling, there are two approaches which can be utilized for this purpose.

First of the approaches is sometimes called authorization-and-capture. In essence, authorization-and-capture approach means that in addition to transaction authorization request, transaction capture request is submitted. Transaction capture request is either sent in a separate additional message (in case of explicit capture), or attached to the authorization request of the next transaction (in case of implicit capture).

The second approach is called timeout reversal. During timeout reversal up to three transaction authorization reversal (or ‘void’) requests are submitted after no response (transaction authorization confirmation) arrives from the back end.

More information on read and #connectiontimeout handling can be found in the respective article “Read and Connection Timeout Handling” on Paylosophy.com.

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