Can I change SagePay from Deferred to Authenticate?

[Sadcase]

We have an issue with our site regarding payment type, which is only a problem when customers purchase certain items.

We sell a number of secondhand books, which are stored in an external Access database, and are linked through using 'External Links'; the rest of our stock is exported from Sage Line 50 via Actinic Link. Because of the nature and quantity of these secondhand books, we don't have any weight set for them, which means that, when ordered, the postage is calculated incorrectly. This was never a problem when we had Shared SSL on our site, because it meant that we could charge the card the correct amount. However, now we have switched to SagePay, we find that we are unable to increase the amount.

SagePay offer two delayed processing methods - Deferred, and Authenticate. Our site is currently set to use deferred, whereby it verifies the card and places a transaction amount on the card, for us to release when we ship the order. However, this only allows us to reduce the amount, and not increase it (as we occasionally need to).

The Authenticate method just verifies the card, but doesn't add an amount to the card; in effect it just stores the card data. When we then come to ship the order, we can add the amount on the card and then authorise the card for that amount.

SagePay says that they believe it's possible to set Actinic up in order to change the processing method to Authenticate from Deferred, and advised me to contact Actinic to find out how.

However, after calling Actinic support, they said that they don't know of any way of doing it, and advised me to ask a question on the community to see if anyone else has done this before - hence this post.

I can obviously only change the transaction type in Actinic from 'Charge transactions immediately' to 'Pre-authorise transactions'. Doing this means that the transaction is Deferred at the SagePay end.

However, someone mentioned a script change where a line is changed to 'Authenticate' - but it was a while back, and applied specifically to PROTX, and I'm not sure if this will still work.

Please can anyone advise whether this is possible / they have done this / how to do it?

Thanks in advance

[Sadcase]

I've just checked the OCCPROTXScriptTemplate.pl, and there is a section as follows:

$sHiddenValues .= "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=\"VPSProtocol\" VALUE=\"2.23\">\n";
if (!$bAuthorize)											# if in pre-authorize mode, change the TxType to DEFERRED
	{
	$sHiddenValues .= "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=\"TxType\" VALUE=\"DEFERRED\">\n";
	}
else
	{
	$sHiddenValues .= "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=\"TxType\" VALUE=\"PAYMENT\">\n";
	}

If I change it to:

$sHiddenValues .= "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=\"VPSProtocol\" VALUE=\"2.23\">\n";
if (!$bAuthorize)											# if in pre-authorize mode, change the TxType to DEFERRED
	{
	$sHiddenValues .= "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=\"TxType\" VALUE=\"AUTHENTICATE\">\n";
	}
else
	{
	$sHiddenValues .= "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=\"TxType\" VALUE=\"PAYMENT\">\n";
	}

would this work?

[Mike Hughes]

I wouldn't be surprised if it did. the best thing though would be for sagepay to tell you what the transaction type should be for 'authenticate' transactions.

they should have a document available that explains what information they need for this to work.

Mike

[Sadcase]

Thanks Mike,

I do have some technical documentation from SagePay so I'll check it out - hopefully it'll provide the answer.

[Sadcase]

I've just checked the SagePay documentation, and it appears that it is indeed as straightforward as changing the script from DEFERRED to AUTHENTICATE.

[Big Game Hunter]

Hi

Is there any chance we could get hold of this Sage Pay documentation as we have the same issue.

[cbarling]

From the 10.0.4 release notes:
"Added ‘Authenticate’ as a payment type for SagePay, PSP-347".

If you have Actinic Payments you can of course increase the amount using the "Pay" button, and by pre-authorising only commit a lower amount when the amount to be charged is less than the amount pre-authorised.

Chris