"With systems for managing real-time credit-card transactions (RediCharge)...and EFT payment transfers (RediEFT), iTransact offers a range of affordable services."

"The iTransact service runs on the central iTransact servers. On your end, you don't need special software, a special terminal, or a special Web server; you can transmit secure information to iTransact from any Web server supporting SSL and any Web page. This means that iTransact can be seamlessly added to any Web site with an existing order form and product information, or it can be easily included as part of a new e-commerce site. You can even choose the credit-card network to manage the transactions. All of the services listed here are available once you register with iTransact.

"The RediCharge process is simple. First, as part of a shopping cart (which iTransact will provide you free of charge) you must set up an online order form containing fields for contact data (name, address, e-mail address) and credit-card information (card number, name of cardholder, expiration date). This form is then sent via secure SSL connection to iTransact, which processes the order in real time. After the order has been approved, iTransact sends an online authorization to the user via your server, and an e-mail confirmation is sent to both you and the customer. Your merchant-banking account receives the proceeds from the transaction.

"The other way to handle a credit-card transaction, should a customer not want to send credit-card information over the Internet, is that an order can be entered manually by merchants via a Web interface after the customer has called in or faxed the information. In addition, the same Web interface can be used to issue online credits to customer accounts.

"The [RediEFT] process is similarly simple. First, as part of a shopping cart (which iTransact will provide you, free of charge) you must set up an online order form containing fields for contact data (name, address, e-mail address) and check information (account number, bank name). This form is then sent via secure SSL connection to iTransact, which verifies the [ABA] information against a national database.

"After the order has been approved, iTransact sends an e-mail confirmation to both you and the customer, and you'll also receive a daily e-mail report (in a tab-delimited format, which can be imported into most accounting and spreadsheet packages) showing customer information for each order.... RediEFT transfers funds from your customer's checking account to your checking account."

"iTransact customers are also offered free access to RediCart. RediCart is a Perl-based shopping cart designed to work directly with RediCharge [and RediEFT] to easily enable real-time transactions. You'll need Perl 5 (or better) installed on your Web server, which also needs to support CGI (which is true of almost every Web server on the market). The shopping cart is actually quite sophisticated, offering many shipping charge options (charging by quantity, weight, or price) and various tax options (including the ability to set different rates in different states)."

"With the variety of services and a commitment to security and prompt transactions, iTransact is an attractive tool for enabling real-time credit-card transactions."

Reviewed by Kevin Reichard