Recently we were diving into the integrations DigMyData customers use the most. We realized our Authorize.net integration was not being used as much as others. This seemed odd, because it is a valuable integration.
Our Authorize.net integration provides great information:
- Revenue
- Transaction information
- Average revenue per customer, etc.
These metrics are even more valuable when you layer them over your other DigMyData metrics.
But, the Authorize.net integration requires more information to integrate than some of our other connections.
With Authorize.net, we require not just your API key, but your transaction key. This is standard in gateway integrations and is for your security.
A transaction key is a complex value that uniquely identifies a merchant’s payment gateway account, and is similar to an account password. Transaction keys are used to authenticate requests submitted to the payment gateway.
Great, right?
The problem in integration occurs because Authorize.net doesn’t save the transaction key in your profile.
As you can see above, the API ID is something that is easy to get (this one is ‘greened’ out for security reasons).
But the transaction key is not.
Authorize.net doesn’t save it in your profile.
If you don’t save it yourself in another (secure) location, and decide to integrate something else, you have to get a new one.
When you generate a new key, the old one will automatically expire within 24 hours.
The question is: what does that affect?
Everything your Authorize.net account is integrated with.
Including your shopping cart and merchant account.
Important things, that you want to be fully functional at all times.
How can you resolve this so you can add more integrations, easily without worrying about something not working?
Some options:
- Save your transaction ID in a secure location
- Alternatively, keep a list of everything your have integrated Authorize.net with
Examples:
- Merchant Account
- Shopping Cart
- DigMyData
In addition, when you change something related to your payment process or flow – always test a couple transactions to ensure that they are going through properly.
