ATM & POS Interface - T24 Background
1. ATM / POS Functionality
ATM Automated Teller Machine, widely used by consumers to perform financial
transactions such as Cash Withdrawals, Cash Deposits, Cheque Book Request, Bill
payments, Mobile Recharges, Funds Transfer between Accounts & non-financial
transactions such as Account Balance Enquiry, Mini Statements Request , Account
Statement Request, Cheque Book Requests etc.,
POS Point of Sale, this type of transaction is classified into two
1. Card present (Transactions performed over a physical machine)
2. Card not present (Online Purchase)
All the mentioned transaction communicates directly to the core banking application
(here it is T24). ISO8583 is the format which is opted by the financial institutions to
read the financial / non-financial transaction messages that is sent via switches.
Note: The transaction types enabled in an ATM / POS machine differs from financial
institutions based on their business necessity.
2. Functionality in T24
ATM interface is a middle layer that resides between Switch(ATM) and
T24(Host), the middle layer is connected to the application server with a dedicate
port, which listens for the incoming ISO messages from the interface. The incoming
message is then converted to T24 readable format (OFS - Open Financial Service) to
process the message. Either success / failure the response will be sent back to the
switch in the same manner as it received. The ISO messages are transmitted from the
Switch to T24 via TCP/IP.
Application Server can be configured for listening ISO messages on required
number of ports (this is decided based on the usage volume of ATM/POS). Application
servers supported by T24 ATM Interface.
TC Server
Jboss
Websphere
Weblogic
3. How ATM / POS Works?
When a customer uses an ATM / POS terminal connected to the switch server,
the switch sends a message to T24. Depending upon the message and various
functions, accounting entries are generated in T24 and response message is sent
either with an error or successful details back to the ATM Interface.
Once the interface is started, the parameters required for the Interface are read from the
mapping tables. Java Listener listens to a port where ATM Switch will be sending the ISO8583
messages. Once the raw ISO8583 message is read from the port, ATM Interface converts this
raw ISO message into OFS message format and sends it to T24, for the execution of
corresponding transaction. After the transaction has been completed at T24, the response
messages are formatted in ISO8583 format and sent back to ATM Switch.
The below picture is a generic demonstration of ATM functional flow in T24.
The below picture is a generic flow chart for ISO message processing in T24
4. How to do ATM testing
To test an ATM interfaces, it is must to know about ISO messages & their
respective data elements in the message, Parameter setup in T24.
A. ISO Messages
As mentioned ISO8583 is the format where the switch exchanges the
communication of the transactions to the host (Core Banking System) made by a card.
T24 supports ISO 8583:87 and ISO 8583:93 versions only, where all mentioned financial
/ non-financial transaction are supported by both the versions. ISO messages are
made of three parts
Message type indicator (MTI)
The first 4 characters after header message is called MTI, indicates of what type of
message either Online or Offline which defines how message should flow to the
system.
Online – transaction that happens on real time which hits the host
Offline – transaction that hits the host after certain interval of time
Example:
0800 >> Request for network sign on
0810 >> Response for network sign on
0200 >> Online request for a financial transaction
0210 >> Online response for a financial transaction
0220 >> Offline request for a financial transaction
0221 >> Financial transactions repeat
0230 >> Offline response for a financial transaction
0420 >> Reversal request
0421 >> Reversal repeat
0430 >> Reversal response
One or more bitmaps indicating data elements like Transaction Date / Amount / Base
Currency / Account Currency / Card data / ATM ID / ATM Location / Country Code
Reserved fields, Data elements indicating data elements Debit Account Number / Bank
Institution ID / Credit Account No / Not used fields
Sample ISO Message:
ISO0160000700200B23CE4812EB08018000000001400000401200000000053071602121120
480292951123470212201002126011826051020514745375576280500007084=2010221162
9092800000D13657222222000000 IO11129 INFICATT TONTON
JB250 634012NETWNETW-003013BNK
NETW10100P116340800000009100131441350& 0000200350! BD00328
00000000000005307160000000000000000000634 TT T T00000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000
The below table indicates the data elements & their values in each position
Positio
Name Type Mandatory
n
1 Bit Map b 64Bit True
3 Processing code n6 True
4 Amount, transaction n 12 True
7 Transmission date & time n 10 True
11 Systems trace audit number n6 True
12 Time, local transaction (hhmmss) n6 True
13 Date, Local transaction (MMdd) n4 True
14 Date, Expiration n4 True
15 Date, Settlement n4 False
17 Date, capture n4 True
18 Merchant type n4 True
19 Acquiring institution country code n3 True
22 Point of service entry mode n3 True
25 Point of service condition code n2 True
27 Authorizing identification response length n1 False
32 Acquiring institution identification code n ..11 True
35 Track 2 data z ..37 True
37 Retrieval reference number an 12 True
38 Authorization identification response an 6 True
39 Response code an 2 True
41 Card acceptor terminal identification ans 16 True
42 Card acceptor identification code ans 15 False
43 Card acceptor name/location ans 40 True
44 Additional response data an ..25 True
48 Additional data – private an …999 False
49 Currency code, transaction a3 True
60 Reserved national an …999 True
61 Reserved Private ans …999 True
63 Reserved Private ans …999 False
70 Network management Information code n3 False
90 Original data elements n 42 False
95 Replacement amounts n 42 False
100 Receiving institution identification code n ..11 True
102 Account identification 1 ans ..28 True
103 Account identification 2 ans ..28 False
121 Reserved for private use ans …999 False
123 Reserved for private use ans …999 False
125 Reserved for private use ans …999 False
126 Reserved for private use ans …999 True
ATM Parameterization
The following are the files that are configured in T24 to process the ISO
messages
[Link] >> The file stores the details about user name for the ATM to access
T24 application, Bank Institution ID, ISO version, Processing Code, Mapping filed for
unique ID of transaction, Network ID (VISA/Master), Default ATM / POS branch &
ATM / POS bin numbers.
[Link] >> This file store the details about the ATM machines belonging to
which branch / location, type of machine (CDM only / ATM & CDM / ATM only),
corresponding ATM GL account numbers.
[Link] >> This file stores the details about receivable and payable accounts
for visa/master card transactions done via ATM only. Id of each record is formed
based on the Acquirer bin of other banks or first 6 digits of PAN No or Network
numbers.
[Link] >> This file is similar to [Link] where details about the
receivable and payable accounts for visa/master card transactions done via POS only.
Id of each record is formed based on the Acquirer bin of other banks or first 6 digits of
PAN No or Network numbers.
[Link] >> This file stores charges for all transactions.
[Link] >> This files gets updated once the details / setup is verified in
[Link]
[Link] >> This files stores the values whether the multiple entries to
be raised for the transaction (charges separately). This records defined here should be
internally used in [Link]
[Link] >> This file stores the details about what sort of response to
be sent to the switch for the processed transactions.
Example:
Message.1: Invalid Account Response Code.1: 76, means the host will respond with
“76”, as response code for the failure transactions due to invalid accounts.
[Link] >> this files stores the details about the values that to be consider
for processing the transaction. Mapping records for each transaction, which indicates
what application, version to be used to raise accounting entries.
5. Challenges faced
Connection establishment between the SWITCH and application server
T24 fails to read the messages from the application server queue, configuration
changes to recognize the incoming messages (Ex: Messages available in MQ, but
T24 fails to process it)
Transaction processing fails due connection timeout between the SWITCH &
application server (Timeout settings that need to be handled at SWITCH,
application server & the host T24)
Parameter Setup missing in T24
Transaction processing per minute, if throughput of transaction is more in
number, TOT of each transactions increases (performance measures)
6. Mitigate Challenges
Monitoring the listener port & the sender port configurations frequently
Monitoring the queue depth frequently & clearing the messages from the queue
if by taking backup of the data in the queue
Revisit the above mentioned parameter setup related to ATM in T24
Get the details from the bank about their ATM usage transactions per day &
accordingly configuration changes needs to be setup at application server level
(performance testing)
Add ATM matrix for better coverage
Sample test cases that to be covered
7. Frequently faced defects
Consideration of locked (blocked) amounts in the account
o Example:
Wrong balance is shown to the customers when balance enquiry
transaction is performed
Raising wrong account entries in case of insufficient balances
Consideration of other branch customer accounts and type of account for
financial transactions
o Example:
Customer accounts are differentiated based on which branch they
belong, so frequent failure happens due to other branch accounts
(apart from Main Brach)
Financial transaction failing for Savings account but working for
current account
Incorrect mapping of response code which is sent back to the SWITCH
o Example:
Consider that the SWITCH expects “00” response code for any
successful transaction, but instead some other code is sent, in this
case the SWITCH considers the transaction as failure but the
customer account would have been debited
Off us transaction failures
o Example:
Cash withdrawal from other financial institutions that does not
use T24 ATM interfaces
Cash withdrawal using other financial institutions card / credit
card in SWITCH that is integrated with T24 ATM Interface
View Mini statement
o Example:
Failure happens due to length of the transaction description of an
account
When no transactions are available in an account
Transactional charges / fees not debited from the account
o Example:
Transaction fee which supposed to be collected for the financial
transaction is not debited from the customer account, due to
incorrect charge setup and also the logic of handling debit entries
for fee transactional charges
Void financial transactions
o Example:
Transactions that supposed to be reversed are not exactly
reversed in the account, this mostly happens in case of
transaction time out.
Note:
Without a physical ATM / Simulator, T24 ATM Interface can be tested by placing
the incoming ISO message in the application server or post the ISO message via
telnet.
Performance of the T24 ATM interface can be tested by sending ISO messages as
a bunch to the application server queue.
Please see attached files for the routines and the mapping document.
[Link] Table
