Announcements & New Features

Solution for the [Currency field is invalid] error

AlertPay_Phoun — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:34:11 GMT

Problem

You are receiving "Sorry, the seller's payment button settings are incorrect [Currency field is invalid]. If you are a buyer, please inform the seller" error message after clicking on a payment button.

Solution

If you are a customer, please tell your merchant to make the following changes. If you are the merchant, you will need to make the following changes in ALL your Buy Now buttons, HTML links and email links.

Add an 's' to the 'http' so that it shows as 'https' in the URL of the PayProcess.aspx page in your Buy Now buttons, HTML links and email links.

In order to avoid the error message when someone clicks on your Buy Now buttons.

Please make sure that the following line of your payment button contains a 's' in 'http://www.alertpay.com/PayProcess.aspx".

<form method="post" action="http://www.alertpay.com/PayProcess.aspx" >

Replace the line mentioned above with this one in your HTML code.

<form method="post" action="https://www.alertpay.com/PayProcess.aspx" >

***Notice the 's' in the URL and it now says 'https'***

Attention Sellers: Complete a Website Review to accept credit card payments

AlertPay_Ferhan — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:50:16 GMT

From our Blog: http://blog.alertpay.com/2009/09/attention-sellers-complete-website.html

Hi everyone,

Just a quick update from the AlertPay team! If you want to sell anything online, whether through a website or through email invoicing, you must complete a website/business review to accept credit card payments.

Worry not - this is an extremely simple and fast process. And while your website or business is being reviewed, you can still accept instant AlertPay balance payments until a decision has been rendered.

If you do not have a website, you will be asked to complete a brief questionnaire and send it to us. After the website/business review, members may be able to accept credit card payments or not depending on a decision rendered by AlertPay.

Those of you who must complete a website/business review will be notified when you sign up for an AlertPay Personal Pro or Business account for the first time, when you login to your AlertPay account or when you try to add a payment button/link to your website/email.

Please note that this does not apply to Personal Starter account holders.

That's it, that's all! If you need assistance, please contact us.

Thank you for your understanding.

Temporary Maintenance on AlertPay database

AlertPay_Phoun — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:57:57 GMT

Due to as system wide maintenance, our database will be taken offline for approximately 2 hours starting at 5:30pm EST. All services related to AlertPay will be unavailable during this period, this includes:

- Logging into your account on www.alertpay.com
- Processing transactions done through our payment buttons
- Mass Pay payment batches
- Send Money API payments

We apologize for the inconveniences that this situation might cause and thank you for your patience.

Temporary Maintenance on AlertPay.com Domain

AlertPay_Chris — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:23:17 GMT

Hello everyone,

An SSL Certificate error is causing the site to redirect incorrectly. We are working the issue and estimate it should be resolved with the next half hour.

Thank you for your patience.

The AlertPay Team

1:00 PM EST EDIT: An issue with the certificate registration is preventing members from logging into their AlertPay account. We hope to have this situation resolved within the next two hours as we are interacting with our vendor at the moment.

4:30 PM EST UPDATE: All access issues relating to the AlertPay.com have been fixed and you should not be experiencing too many more issues.

Thanks for your patience.

Introducing Multi-Item Checkout

AlertPay_Niel — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:53:26 GMT

AlertPay is proud to announce the release of our newest feature: Multi-Item Checkout.

Multi-Item Checkout allows you to further integrate your shopping cart by listing all the items a customer is checking out with. This means that along with processing your payments, the Pay Process page will also account for all the items in the cart when the customer checks out.

Developers can now use the following variables along with the usual ones:

ap_itemname -- Original variable, can still be used

ap_itemname_1

ap_itemname_2

ap_itemname_3 and so on for multiple items

*Please note that the index numbers can be anything, and do not have to be in order (they will be displayed in increasing order regardless of missing numbers inbetween). They can be used without the need for the original ap_itemname to be present, but they can also be used in conjunction if necessary.

we can use the same indexing system for the following variables, to tie them with the corresponding itemname:

ap_description_[index]

ap_itemcode_[index]

ap_amount_[index]

ap_quantity_[index]

Using the above, you can easily build buttons that are product packages and sell your items or services as bundles. We are looking forward to incorporating this feature into a more dynamic button that lets the customer choose how they want their products bundled, however this is a feature that is most likely not going to be released until next year.

Please note that this feature will only start being available as of the next release, scheduled for next week.

New Mass Pay Features

AlertPay_Phoun — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:03:15 GMT

Release Date: March 31, 2009

Mass Pay can be used to pay several or a large group of people at one time. If you have weekly payouts, like commissions or referral payments, this is a fast and effective tool for you.

When you upload your batch, it will be queued in our system until processed. From now on, all batches of payments made through Mass Pay will have a reference number. This new feature will allow you to follow the status of your batch.

We have also made other changes to our Mass Pay feature which will improve management and usability. To search for previous batches of payments, simply click on View previous mass payments.

(Click to enlarge)

Batch History

(Click to enlarge)

This page allows you to search for previous batches. The results will be a listing of the batches that match your search fields. The search fields are as follows:

Email Address: Enter a value to search by email address.
Batch Number: Enter a value to search by the batch reference number.
Reference Number: Enter a value to search by the transaction reference number.
Currency: Displays all batches that have the selected currency.
"Since" radio button: Displays all batches since Today, 1 week ago, 2 weeks ago, 1 month ago, or 1 year ago.
"From - To" radio button: Displays all batches that satisfy the date delimiters.

Batch History Search Result

(Click to enlarge)

The search result page displays all batches that match the search fields. Each row contains information about a batch. Here is a description of each field:

Date: The date on which the payments were submitted.
Batch Reference Number: A unique reference number for your batch.
Email Address: The email address that the recipient will see when they receive your payment.
Payments: Displays the Total number of payments and the number of Successful or Failed payments.
Amount: The amount of money that was sent in this batch and the currency that it was sent in. This amount is deducted from your account.
Status: Informs you on the progression of the batch. The statuses will be either Done or In Progress.

Detailed description of a batch page

(Click to enlarge)

If you click a Batch Reference Number, you will see a listing of all the payments that were included in the batch. Here is a description of each field:

Check box: When checked, the corresponding transaction will be submitted when the RESUBMIT SELECTED button is clicked.
Date: The date and time when this payment was processed.
Email Address: The email address of the payment receiver.
Amount: The amount of money paid and the currency that it was paid in.
Reference: This is a Reference Number for the payment. It will have a value only if the payment was successful.
Result: A message concerning the transaction. It could be either a success message or an error message.

The page after Resubmit Selected

You can select any previous transactions and run them again by clicking on the RESUBMIT SELECTED button. Here is an example:

(Click to enlarge)

After clicking on the RESUBMIT SELECTED button, you will be sent to the following page:

(Click to enlarge)

To submit the new batch of payments, click Next. On the following page, complete your transaction by entering your Transaction PIN:

(Click to enlarge)

IPN Upgrade

AlertPay_Phoun — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:45:02 GMT

Release Date: March 31, 2009

From now on, when AlertPay sends IPN posts it will make sure that your web server receives it. If AlertPay does not receive an acknowledgement that your server received our IPN post, then it will try again up to 9 times until your web server successfully receives the post. The attempts will occur as follows:

•   The first 3 attempts will occur every 15 minutes
•   If the previous attempts fail, the next 3 will occur every hour
•   Lastly, 3 final attempts will be made every 8 hours

The intervals between the attempts will give you enough time to correct anything on your server that is preventing you from receiving the IPN posts.

If all of the 9 attempts fail, then the IPN notification will be lost for that transaction.

Reasons for changing our IPN

Many of our merchants have to contact us when they do not receive an IPN for a given transaction. We then have to manually re-send it.

For example, if a merchant has a script that is updating an IPN in the database, then they have to do one of the following if the IPN was lost:

• manually update the database
• contact us and wait until we manually re-send the IPN

This can be very troublesome. An IPN can be lost due to your server being down, a bad AlertURL address, a network glitch, a firewall issue or any other unknown reasons. We now make sure that your server properly receives it and we will automatically re-send at a later time if it fails.

The intervals at which the attempts are made will allow you enough time to detect and correct any issues that may prevent you from receiving our IPN.

New AlertPay Blog

AlertPay_Ferhan — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:06:31 GMT

AlertPay would like to take a moment to thank you, our valued members, for your continued loyalty and patience during this period of rapid growth, and to address the various changes taking place here at AlertPay.

Without you, our valued members, we wouldn’t be able to change and improve our services for now and the future. We value your feedback and are working to improve communication so that you’re kept aware of what’s going on behind the scenes.

For more information about what’s going on at AlertPay, please allow us to introduce our new company blog where you will be able to stay aware of all that’s going on: http://blog.alertpay.com. Now that we’re in 2009, we’re making a promise to all our members to be more transparent and open about communicating any and all changes and issues.

AlertPay Team

"Session Timed Out" solution

AlertPay_Phoun — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:00:03 GMT

Problem:

After clicking on a Buy Now button, an email link or a HTML link of a merchant, the customer will try to complete his transaction on AlertPay's PayProcess page and he will then get a message in saying "Your session has expired. Please log in again."

Solution:

If you are a customer, please tell your merchant to make the following changes. If you are the merchant, you will need to make the following changes in ALL your Buy Now buttons, HTML links and email links.

Add an 's' to the 'http' so that it shows as 'https' in the URL of the PayProcess.aspx page in your Buy Now buttons, HTML links and email links.

For example, this code is missing an 's' in the URL on the first line of the form.

<form method="post" action="http://www.alertpay.com/PayProcess.aspx" >
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_purchasetype" value="item-goods"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_merchant" value="apdevforum@gmail.com"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_itemname" value="Hat"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_currency" value="USD"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_returnurl" value="http://www.alertpay.com"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_itemcode" value="01"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_quantity" value="1"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_description" value="Example"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_amount" value="10.00"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_cancelurl" value="http://dev.alertpay.com"/>
    <input type="image" name="ap_image" src="https://www.alertpay.com/Images/BuyNow/pay_now_3.gif"/>
</form>

It should be replaced with:

<form method="post" action="https://www.alertpay.com/PayProcess.aspx" >
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_purchasetype" value="item-goods"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_merchant" value="apdevforum@gmail.com"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_itemname" value="Hat"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_currency" value="USD"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_returnurl" value="http://www.alertpay.com"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_itemcode" value="01"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_quantity" value="1"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_description" value="Example"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_amount" value="10.00"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="ap_cancelurl" value="http://dev.alertpay.com"/>
    <input type="image" name="ap_image" src="https://www.alertpay.com/Images/BuyNow/pay_now_3.gif"/>
</form>

***Notice the 's' in the URL and it now says 'https'***

The timed out issue should not re-appear again once the modification has been made.

Disabled Bank Transfers to account holders in USA and Canada! All Pending Were Cancelled!

ceoart — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:31:34 GMT

I was very surprised Friday when I received a message that evening that "a glitch by our banking partner in their system upgrade has resulted in a technical issue which is directly impacting our bank transfer functions" See detailed Message Below.

This occurred after you were closed and all my withdrawals were cancelled . I need to get my money into my bank as soon as possible. This is just not fair. Can you do something so I can see money go into my Bank Account Monday or Tuesday. I spend a lot of money Advertising with Yahoo and I was counting on getting this money into my bank account.

Unfortunately, a glitch by our banking partner in their system upgrade has resulted in a technical issue which is directly impacting our bank transfer functions at this time. We expect that they will resolve their issue shortly. Until this issue is remedied, we will have to disable Bank Transfers to accountholders in USA and Canada. This issue is similar to an issue faced by banks before:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=93661
http://www.ladlass.com/ice/archives/008477.html

Pending USD/ CAD Bank transfer withdrawals have now been cancelled on your account.

To deposit into AlertPay, you may still use the following options: Money Order, Certified Check, Bank Wire and Bank Transfers outside of USA and Canada. (i.e EUR, GBP, AUD…)

To withdraw from AlertPay, you may withdraw by Check and Bank Wire.

We are working around the clock to remedy the situation as it puts us in a situation with you our members. We thank you for understanding, and it should be resolved in a few days.

NOTICE: What is a DDOS?

AlertPay_Ferhan — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:56:27 GMT

Hello,

Here is some information to address some general concerns regarding a DDOS. You can find more information at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

1) What is a DDOS?

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users.

2) Is my data and account safe?

Yes. Your account data is not the target, it is simply to make the website unreachable for others. All our databases are 100% secure.

3) What are you doing to resolve this issue?

Our engineers are working around the clock with our data center to resolve this issue. This is a large scale attack that is growing in strength and is one of the largest ones our data center has ever seen. We are putting measures in place to mitigate it, but it's a gradual effort.

HOW TO USE THIS DEV FORUM

AlertPay_Ferhan — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:41:16 GMT

As this is a DEVELOPERS FORUM, please keep your posts on topic. This is NOT a CUSTOMER SUPPORT FORUM. We do not handle Customer Support issues, and only provide Technical Support, and Development related assistance.

1) DO NOT PM (Private Message) forum moderators unless we request you to do so, else we will ignore them. And DO NOT PM every moderator.

2) DO NOT send emails to forum moderators unless we request you to do so, else we will ignore them. And DO NOT email every moderator. Failure to do so, will result in your forum account being banned.

3) DO NOT Post your Customer Support related issues, since we do no have access to your account details. If you do so, we will delete your post.

4) DO NOT Post your Customer Support related issues here requesting help, unless it's been 5 BUSINESS DAYS. A business day is Monday through Friday and does not include weekends. If this is the case, please submit only your Ticket #. Do not provide your email address or other personal details.

NOTICE: SERVER OUTAGE UPDATE

AlertPay_Ferhan — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:18:21 GMT

We have finally mitigated the massive DDOS attack that started at 6:00am EST. Unfortunately it took almost all day to resolve. The site is operational now, and hopefully we'll continue to tweak it more tomorrow to ensure this doesn't happen again.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and we understand that this outage affects each of you personally. We’re sorry for that. We will continue to put measures in place so that outages like this do not occur again.

Ferhan

NOTICE: SERVER OUTAGE DUE TO DDOS ATTACK -PLEASE USE ALTERNATE SITE: https://67.205.87.226

AlertPay_Ferhan — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:51:46 GMT

We are currently experiencing a large scale DDOS attack that has hit our sites which started at approximately 6:00am EST Sunday. We are working with our data center to resolve and/or mitigate this issue.

More information will be posted here as we get updates.

For the time being customers can connect to AlertPay at an alternate location:

https://67.205.87.226

Ferhan

Announcements & New Features

Solution for the [Currency field is invalid] error

Attention Sellers: Complete a Website Review to accept credit card payments

Temporary Maintenance on AlertPay database

Temporary Maintenance on AlertPay.com Domain

Introducing Multi-Item Checkout

New Mass Pay Features

Batch History

Batch History Search Result

Detailed description of a batch page

The page after Resubmit Selected

IPN *Upgrade*

New AlertPay Blog

"Session Timed Out" solution

Disabled Bank Transfers to account holders in USA and Canada! All Pending Were Cancelled!

NOTICE: What is a DDOS?

HOW TO USE THIS DEV FORUM

NOTICE: SERVER OUTAGE UPDATE

NOTICE: SERVER OUTAGE DUE TO DDOS ATTACK -PLEASE USE ALTERNATE SITE: https://67.205.87.226

IPN Upgrade