Authorize.net SIM Setup Help Requested

[DrByte]

Does your hosting account offer free use of their shared SSL certificate? That should be sufficient for AIM.

[thedragonman]

No such luck.
I thought about using OpenSSL to generate a cert but it would just be self signed.

[AmishHosting]

Understandable.

However, the AIM approach is much more secure, and an SSL certificate can be acquired for under $50/yr, and a static IP can be had for approx $2/mo extra on hosting plans.

... there are lesser fraud risks when keeping customers on your site instead of sending them somewhere else to complete payment.

It's not the cost of the security certificate.
It's not the cost of static-IP hosting.
IMO, it's the COST OF LOST SALES because customers walk away in fear.

IMO, the point of having a trusted third-party payment system is that the third party is TRUSTED.

If I go to a site to buy something, and I don't know them from Adam, but I am paying through Authorize.Net, and I'm entering my credit card information at the Authorize.Net site, then I figure that the site might get their hands on $42.60 of my money, but if they don't deliver, I can always contest the charge.

If I go to a site to buy something, and I don't know them from Adam, and they want me to give them my credit card number, expiration date and CVV number, I wonder if they're really selling that CD box set for $42.60 delivered. Maybe they don't have any CDs to sell, and maybe they don't have a merchant account, either. Maybe they're just phishing for information, and it will cost me thousands of dollars and take me months of time to clean up my credit record.

Authorize.Net does NOT give any diagnostic code on SIM - it simply drops the connection. But the SIM module is asking for too much information, anyhow. Seems like should be like Paypal IPN - the customer indicates the method of payment and clicks.

[thedragonman]

The benefit of using SIM in my eyes is that by assigning a trusted third party to handle the transaction relieves me of the security cost and hassles.

I do not want access to my customers CC information, I do not what to worry that someone will find a hole in the security settings that I might have missed.

Sending my customers to a "trusted" third party service provider to handle the transactions is much more attractive to me and my customers.