Payment integration with Xetta (formerly OneStopSecure)

Where Register! is used for registration for meetings, to protect the privacy and security of participants, registration fees must be collected through a fit for purpose payment system. Many conference organisers have opted or been required by their hosting university to use the Xetta payment system, which has become the standard payment system at several Australian universities. In these cases, Register! has been integrated with Xetta in such a way that Register! passes control to Xetta for the participant to make their payment and then Xetta returns payment information back to Register! once payment is made. This supports automatic recording of payment status in Register!, so that conference organisers can treat Register! as a reasonably up to date source of truth about registration and payment status of participants, requiring direct lookup of information in Xetta only where a discrepancy is detected or a refund is required.

On the Payments tab in the registration interface, a link is provided to take the participant to the Xetta system. The link provides Xetta with enough information to eliminate the need for participants to enter their personal details (name, email, etc.) and also informs Xetta of the total amount to be paid. They need only enter their credit card details, which are handled securely in Xetta and unknown to Register!. The link also provides a registration ID which Xetta sends back to Register! once payment is made, to enable Register! to record the fact that payment has been made for the correct registration. The url for the link that takes the participant from Xetta and unknown to Register! is of the general form:

https://university.xetta.com/tranadd?tran-type=[Type]&Registration=[RegistrationID]&First_Name=[FirstName]&Surname=[Surname]&Email=[Email]&UnitAmountIncTax=[PaymentAmount]

The format of this url including the names of the parameters can easily be modified in Register! to accomodate differences between specific installations of Xetta at different universities. Xetta sends back payment information to Register! by simply calling making a http request of a form something like (called the Approved URI in Xetta):

https://www.mathematics.org.au/sys/pages/plain.php?page_id=46&action=Xetta&conf_id=[conferenceID]&ReceiptNo=[ReceiptNo]&Registration=[RegistrationID]&Amount=[UnitAmountIncTax]&Result=Approved

Again, the exact details of this url can be easily adapted to suit differences between specific installations of Xetta. Xetta has built-in functionality for passing information to external systems in this way. The hash parameter required in some Xetta installations can also be implemented.