MySQL and Perl for the Web

Collecting Payment Information

For the doc_shop.pl application, we pretty quickly skipped over the part that showed what to do with credit card information that we obtain from customers. Let’s return to the topic of payment and discuss the issue in more detail.

When you sell something, you want to be paid for it, so it’s necessary to arrange for collection of information that allows you to assess the proper charges to the customer. Most people who shop online prefer to pay by credit card rather than by some other method, so that’s the most common means by which business is transacted over the Internet. It’s also the method this section concentrates on, though we’ll also survey other payment methods briefly.

Credit Card Processing

If you want ...