Bancontact

Accept Bancontact payments in your online store.

Bancontact is the most widely used payment system in Belgium, allowing customers to make payments through Bancontact cards or a mobile app linked to a Belgian bank account. Use the emerchantpay Bancontact API to accept Bancontact as a payment method across all of emerchantpay’s payment integrations.

Payment method	Countries/regions
Local card	Belgium

Prerequisites

Integrating emerchantpay requires an account. To apply, submit the contact form. Your emerchantpay Account Manager will provide your credentials and assist you with the payment solutions.

To integrate with Bancontact, connect to the emerchantpay payment gateway using the emerchantpay Bancontact API. You should have a working knowledge of web programming languages, HTTP methods in XML and JSON formats, and UTF8 encoding. Use the emerchantpay Payment Gateway SDK libraries with code samples to integrate with the payment gateway in a range of languages.

For a solution that requires less development overhead, accept Bancontact payments through the emerchantpay Web Payment Form (WPF). Contact your Account Manager and tell them you want to accept Bancontact through the WPF, and refer to the emerchantpay Payment Gateway API WPF documentation.

1. Create a Bancontact payment request

To submit a payment using Bancontact, create a payment request to the emerchantpay payment gateway. Specify bcmc as the transaction_type.

See the emerchantpay Bancontact API documentation for the complete list of Bancontact request parameters and code samples.

Example of passing a Bancontact transaction request:

<payment_transaction>
    <transaction_type>bcmc</transaction_type>
    <transaction_id>119643250547501c79d8295</transaction_id>
    <usage>40208 concert tickets</usage>
    <remote_ip>245.253.2.12</remote_ip>
    <return_success_url>http://www.example.com/success</return_success_url>
    <return_failure_url>http://www.example.com/failure</return_failure_url>
    <amount>100</amount>
    <currency>EUR</currency>
    <billing_address>
      <first_name>John</first_name>
      <last_name>Smith</last_name>
      <address1>45 North Str</address1>
      <zip_code>W1T 2QS</zip_code>
      <city>London</city>
      <country>UK</country>
    </billing_address>
 </payment_transaction>

Use your staging environment credentials to initially set up and test your integration. Once you are ready to move to production and accept live payments, create a payment request using your production credentials and production URLs.

2. Receive a response

You will receive a Success or Error response to your payment request.

Example of a Success response:

<payment_response>
    <transaction_type>bcmc</transaction_type>
    <status>pending_async</status>
    <unique_id>44177a21403427eb96664a6d7e5d5d48</unique_id>
    <transaction_id>119643250547501c79d8295</transaction_id>
    <technical_message>Transaction successful!</technical_message>
    <message>Transaction successful!</message>
    <redirect_url>https://staging.gate.emerchantpay.net/redirect/to_acquirer/649e1ff35c61</redirect_url>
    <mode>live</mode>
    <timestamp>2024-12-21T20:15:12Z</timestamp>
    <descriptor>Acme Co.</descriptor>
    <amount>100</amount>
    <currency>EUR</currency>
    <sent_to_acquirer>true</sent_to_acquirer>
</payment_response>

Use the returned redirect_url to redirect your customer to authorise the payment with Bancontact. See the emerchantpay Bancontact API documentation for the complete list of Bancontact response parameters and code samples.

Asynchronous notification

Because the Bancontact payment transaction is asynchronous, the result of your customer’s payment is sent as a separate HTTP POST notification from the gateway to the notification_url that you supplied with the transaction request.

Example of a notification for a Bancontact transaction:

?transaction_id=ir_s2s_eur1680778975
&terminal_token=9b4c7d034097d36812648db23f419d28246523a8
&unique_id=6bddf6b318eb35fefd9c7dee85123fa4
&transaction_type=online_banking
&status=approved
&signature=985ff56028325d3ccbf4af221acf8ad3f1683028&amount=500

The status field provides you with information on the outcome of the transaction. See Transaction States for more information about transaction statuses.

For the full list of notification parameters, see Notifications.

Use the signature field to verify that the notification has been sent by the emerchantpay payment gateway. Each session signature is generated by combining the unique_id of the transaction and your API password, and generating a SHA-1 hash function of the combined string.

signature = SHA-1 hash value of <unique_id><API password>

Notification signature examples:

unique_id	API password	signature
26aa150ee68b1b2d6758a0e6c44fce4c	50fd87e65eb415f42fb5af4c9cf497662e00b785	c5219b3d385e74496b2b48a549
3f760162ef57a829011e5e2379b3fa17	50fd87e65eb415f42fb5af4c9cf497662e00b785	14519d0db2f7f8f407efccc9b099

After you have verified the notification state and validity, render an XML page containing the transaction’s unique id to acknowledge that you have received the notification.

Example of a notification reply you use to confirm a notification:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<notification_echo>
  <unique_id>3f760162ef57a829011e5e2379b3fa17</unique_id>
</notification_echo>

3. Test your integration

Before you can accept live payments, you must test your integration in the staging environment.

Add an item to your cart in your online store.
Proceed to the checkout page and check out using Bancontact.
Follow the redirect link in the response.
In the payment simulator, follow the instructions to simulate a transaction.
Complete the order and verify that you are redirected to the order confirmation page.
Log in to the Gateway Console.
In the navigation menu, go to Payment transactions.
Verify that the transaction appears at the top of the list and is successful.

4. Accept live payments

After you have successfully tested your Bancontact integration, you are ready to move to the production environment and accept live payments. Contact your emerchantpay Account Manager to get your login credentials for the production environment.

To move to the production environment, create payment requests using your production API credentials and production URLs.

You are now ready to accept live payments using Bancontact.