macfitz@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Mark D Fitzsimmos) (10/26/90)
Does anyone know of a Macintosh program that obtains credit card authorizations, where you enter the account number, amount of purchase, expiration and then dial a remote database to confirm that the account is in good standing and not over-extended. Since the application is for mail order purposes, a batch mode would be essential to make the program really useful. Alternatively, where can I find: 1) the communications protocols for computerized CC authorizations and 2) a decent library for communications programming, so that using a modem is painless. I can write software to communicate with the serial driver (PBRead/Write, etc.) but I don't have any idea how to work the modem (e.g., dialing the number, establishing and maintaining communications). I'm guessing that these don't represent difficult programming hurdles, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel. A TCL object library that included some error handling would be particularly useful. I suppose the easiest path might be with Hypercard, but I'd rather write some stand-alone code in Pascal that could run in background. Thanks for your assistance. Mark D. Fitzsimmons