Offline and online payment processing
WebSphere Commerce Payments supports the use of payment plug-ins for offline or online payment processing.
Offline processing or the offline protocol refers to the processing of financial transactions that require external intervention for successful execution. For example, when a credit card needs to be processed over the phone or through a swipe box, the processing of the credit card is considered offline because external intervention by a human is needed to process the transaction.
Online processing or the online protocol refers to the processing of financial transactions that do not require external intervention for successful execution. The complete processing of the financial transaction is done electronically and automatically without the need for any external or human intervention.
With the WebSphere Commerce Payments Cassette plug-in, the PaymentSystemPluginMapping.xml file uses a property called SupportsOnlineTransaction to determine whether the transactions for a particular payment system and payment configuration should be handled as offline transactions. This property is not generic for all plug-ins; it is only defined by the WebSphere Commerce Payments Cassette plug-in to identify whether the transaction should be kept in pending state before issuing the financial request to WebSphere Commerce Payments Cassettes. If you are developing a payment plug-in, you can refer to this property as an example of how offline transactions can be handled.
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