All credit card payments taken online must be processed using a secure method. With Telegraph, you can create a form that takes client and pricing information and sends it to the Cashier’s System, which handles the credit transactions in a completely secure environment.

Before You Begin

  1. Follow the steps provided by the University Cashier to start processing credit card payments.
  2. Create your Telegraph form using the field names specified in the sample credit card form. This will ensure that the Cashier’s System receives the information necessary for the transaction.
  3. Follow the instructions below after setting up your Telegraph configuration file.

Process Credit Cards Online

  1. Add this line of code to your Telegraph configuration file:
    <directive special="nelnet" is_test="Y" amount="amount-to-be-charged" order_type="your-nelnet-order-type"/>
  2. Replace amount-to-be-charged with the amount (in dollars) to be charged, your-nelnet-order-type with the Application/Order Type Code you received from the University Cashier.  Note that you can use conditional variables or form fields to have different amounts charged:
    • Example #1 – Single Sum
      • <directive special="nelnet" is_test="Y" order_type="AB123" amount="50.00" />
    • Example #2 – Sum Specified by a Form Field
      • <directive special="nelnet" is_test="Y" order_type="AB123" amount=[total-charge]"/>
    • Example #3 – Sum Specified by a Conditional Directive
      In this example, if the value of the field location is on-campus, then a different price will be substituted for whatever [total-charge] normally is.

      • <directive special="nelnet" is_test="Y" order_type="AB123" amount=[total-charge]"/>
        <directive action="conditional-field" source_field="location" source_value="on-campus" target_field="total-charge" target_value="100.00" />
  3. Contact the Cashier’s Office to test your form. Once the Cashier’s Office gives its approval, you can add the production codes to activate the form:
    • Setis_test to N.
      • <directive special="nelnet" is_test="N" amount="amount-to-be-charged" order_type="your-nelnet-order-type"/>
      • This will activate your form, changing it from test mode to production mode, enabling you to take and process actual orders immediately.

Process Credit Card Orders Taken over the Phone

The order_type parameter tells Nelnet whether it is a public or office payment and other settings and one form may now submit to more than one order_type using the [if?:] special variable. In the example below if the field named “email” has the value “dept_email@bu.edu”, “OF321” will be the order-type value and, otherwise, “AB123” would be order-type.

Example:
<directive special="nelnet" is_test="N" amount="50.00" order_type="[if?:email=dept_email@bu.edu:OF321:AB123]"/>

Examples of Complete Files