The Authorize.Net Developer Blog

[#1]

When signing up for either a live account or a test account with Authorize.Net, you’ll find that you’re asked which type of account you need: a Card Not Present (CNP) account or a Card Present (CP) account. So what exactly is the difference between the two?

The answer is pretty simple and derived from the names of the account types themselves. Card Present literally means that the cardholder is physically present along with the card at the point of purchase. This means that the track data encoded on the magnetic stripe at the back of the credit card will be read by a magnetic card reader. This term is used in the payments industry to identify traditional "brick and mortar” or retail merchants.

Card Not Present literally means that the merchant accepts payment from a cardholder without seeing the plastic card. This means that the card information is manually keyed in instead of being swiped through a card reader. This term is used in the payments industry to identify e-commerce merchants, such as those that operate via websites, and mail order/telephone order (MOTO) merchants.

Why is there a difference?
The reason that there are two main categories mostly has to do with potential risk. CNP merchants will generally pay higher interchange fees to their Merchant Service Provider (MSP) than CP merchants simply because there is the possibility of a greater chance of potential fraud on transactions where the merchant doesn’t actually see the physical card.

Why does this matter?
Because of the difference between the two account types, you cannot use a CP account to process transactions using a CNP connection method and vice versa. If you do try to use an incorrect account type, your transactions will error out. For instance, if you’re trying to test out CIM using a CP account, you will receive an error. This is because CIM is a CNP connection method and so you must have a CNP account to use it.

Related Errors and Fixes
The common errors you’ll see related to using an incorrect account type are error code 85 and 87, which return error messages of “The market type is invalid” and “Transactions of this market type cannot be processed on this system,” respectively.

If you receive one of these errors while using a test account, simply go to our test account application page to request a new test account selecting the appropriate type, CNP or CP.

If you receive one of these errors with your live account, then you need to contact your reseller or MSP to see about getting a new CNP or CP gateway account, depending on which you need.

How do I find out which account I have?
To determine what kind of account you have (either for your test account or your live account), simply follow these steps:

1. Log into the Merchant Interface (https://test.authorize.net for test accounts and https://account.authorize.net for live accounts).
2. In the left-hand menu, under Tools, if all you see is a Virtual Terminal link, then you have a CP account.
3. If you see a plethora of other links like Upload Transactions, Recurring Billing, Fraud Detection Suite, Customer Information Manager and Simple Checkout, then you have a CNP account. Yup, it's just that easy.  

Hope that helps!

Michelle
Developer Community Manager





[#2]

hi can any one tell me how to start payment gate way using visualstudio asp.net please tell me how code will be.

[#3]

That all depends on your specific implementation. First, check out this page for a list of the integration methods possible. Then to learn more, click the Get Started link within a particular API to check out the documentation and available SDKs.  You can also check out our sample code page for examples of what code could look like.

Thanks,

Michelle

Developer Community Manager

[#4]

Hi,

I'm using sand box account , in my form when i'm submit, it shows eror 

• (TESTMODE) Transactions of this market type cannot be processed on this system. (87)
• how can i remove it, i'm using asp.net2

[#5]

Not sure if you read the blog. But the solution is there.

Related Errors and Fixes
The common errors you’ll see related to using an incorrect account type are error code 85 and 87, which return error messages of “The market type is invalid” and “Transactions of this market type cannot be processed on this system,” respectively.

If you receive one of these errors while using a test account, simply go to our test account application page to request a new test account selecting the appropriate type, CNP or CP.

If you receive one of these errors with your live account, then you need to contact your reseller or MSP to see about getting a new CNP or CP gateway account, depending on which you need.

[#6]

We are building a retail solution that will be CP for sales, but CNP for returns.  It is my understanding then that we will need 2 different Authorize.net accounts: a CP account for retail sales and a CNP account for returns.  Is that correct? 

I assume that there is no problem with the two different Authorize.net accounts linking to the same merchant account - is that correct as well?

Thanks!

[#7]

Hi paladinlogic,

You can do CNP returns on the CP account. The card is not required for any returns as long as they are within 120 days and you are refunding the same credit card. You do not need a separate CNP gateway to process a refund for a charge that was ran on your CP account.

Thanks,
Joy