Welcome to the modular version of our flagship course "ISO 8583 and Transaction Processing".

ISO8583 Module 2: Intermediate

Continue your journey into the exciting world of payment transactions with the 2nd module of our flagship course "ISO 8583 and Transaction Processing", and learn how and when the different ISO fields are used.




The complete course puts you on a track to become an expert at understanding how payment transactions work, from terminal to issuer.

The 4 modules together build up our "ISO 8583 and Transaction Processing" course, and are equivalent to a 3- to 4-day course with a highly experienced instructor, and learning outcomes are reached with taught lessons, quizzes and 22 practical exercises for the guided parsing and analysis of many messages. 


ISO8583 Module 2 is an 8-hour technical course that takes a deep dive into the different ISO fields, and explains how and when they are used.

This 2nd module is quite technical, and can be taken by anyone with basic IT knowledge who wants to start a journey towards payment transaction expertise. We strongly advise completing Module 1 before taking this Module 2.

Upon completion of this module, an "Intermediate level" certificate is delivered to the student, which can be printed and shared on LinkedIn. 


All the video lessons come with English closed captions/subtitles, which have been automatically translated into the following languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian and Urdu.


If you want to understand the complete course structure, be sure to check the "ISO 8583 and Transaction Processing" course page: Visit now

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Watch Intro Video

Course presentation

Let the instructor tell you all about the course!

Unique learning approach

The learning path is one of increasing complexity, with building blocks to construct the ISO 8583 knowledge, and practical exercises and quizzes to keep students engaged. The complete course contains 22 practical exercises for the guided parsing and analysis of many messages.



The ISO8583 Module 2 course starts with by some technical fundamentals; this is to ensure that students have a solid IT base for ISO 8583, and is supplemented with practical exercises.

The course then covers bitmaps and length and format indicators. Those courses are supplemented with practical exercises so that students can apply those concepts.

The journey continues with an in-depth review of all the ISO 8583 data elements, looking at the 1987 and 1993 norms and at how they are used in practice in the industry. This is also supplemented with practical exercises, to help students grasp how those data elements are structured. The capstone of this review is a course on message parsing, where students learn how to extract information from a raw ISO 8583 message, and perform parsing themselves. And the in-depth journey on ISO 8583 finishes with explanations on data element presence in messages.

Course curriculum

  • 1
    01. Technical fundamentals
    • Course material
    • 01-01. Binary
    • 01-02. Bytes
    • 01-02. Practical exercises on Bytes
    • 01-03. Hexadecimal
    • 01-03. Practical exercises on Hexadecimal
    • 01-04. Bitmaps
    • 01-04. Practical exercises on Bitmaps
    • 01-05. BCD (Binary-Coded Decimal)
    • 01-06. ASCII and EBCDIC
    • 01-06. Practical exercises on ASCII and EBCDIC
    • Chapter 1 Quiz
  • 2
    02. Message format - Part 1
    • 02-01. Bitmaps
    • 02-01. Practical exercises on Bitmaps
    • 02-02. Length and format indicators
    • 02-02. Practical exercises on Length and format indicators
    • 02-03. Data elements 1 to 16
    • 02-03. Practical exercises on Data elements 1 to 16
    • 02-04. Data elements 17 to 32
    • 02-04. Practical exercises on Data elements 17 to 32
    • 02-05. Data elements 33 to 48
    • 02-05. Practical exercises on Data elements 33 to 48
    • 02-06. Data elements 49 to 64
    • 02-06. Practical exercises on Data elements 49 to 64
    • Chapter 2 Quiz
  • 3
    03. Message format - Part 2
    • 03-01. Data elements 65 to 80
    • 03-01. Practical exercises on Data elements 65 to 80
    • 03-02. Data elements 81 to 96
    • 03-02. Practical exercises on Data elements 81 to 96
    • 03-03. Data elements 97 to 112
    • 03-03. Practical exercises on Data elements 97 to 112
    • 03-04. Data elements 113 to 128
    • 03-05. Example of message parsing
    • 03-05. Practical exercises on Message parsing
    • 03-06. Data Elements Presence
    • Chapter 3 Quiz

Reviews from our alumni

  • Paytech Online Iso 8583:

    Justine Naidoo

    [Junior EMV Specialist in Standard Bank South Africa] It has been an incredible opportunity having to do the ISO 8583 ONLINE TRAINING, It was user friendl...

    Read More

    [Junior EMV Specialist in Standard Bank South Africa] It has been an incredible opportunity having to do the ISO 8583 ONLINE TRAINING, It was user friendly and straight to the point,easy to understand and it included very relevant information needed when working with ISO .I highly recommend that this course becomes a basis for all users of ISO, purely because of the content that touches on each and every ‘element ‘(no pun intended ) of the system.I enjoyed the interactive voice over that made it easier for me to understand as I am more of a listener than a reader 😊 .

    Read Less

  • Excellent Course

    Innocent Oketayot

    [Innocent Oketayot, Systems Administrator-Finance Trust Bank, Uganda] This is a great course. For such a highly complex topic as transaction processing, th...

    Read More

    [Innocent Oketayot, Systems Administrator-Finance Trust Bank, Uganda] This is a great course. For such a highly complex topic as transaction processing, the course was presented in such a simplified manner making it very easy to understand. The content is also quite comprehensive, covering all the bases I needed to advance in the world of transaction processing.

    Read Less

  • Transaction processing

    Mphikeleli Zwane

    [Software Developer at Altech Card Solutions] Before taking this course, i had a little knowledge about transactions flow and processing from the merchants ...

    Read More

    [Software Developer at Altech Card Solutions] Before taking this course, i had a little knowledge about transactions flow and processing from the merchants terminal to the card issuer and the parties involved. This course made it easy for me to understand the processing of transaction within our company. with the help of this course, now i know the different message types, ISO 8583 message layout , fields and their meaning, different ISO 8583 message protocols. Without this course it would take me a year or so to understand the general flow of transactions from the Terminal to the issuer. i would recommend this course to anyone who works in Payment industry, it is easy to follow and understand.

    Read Less

Who is the course intended for?

I built the course with the following audience in mind: people who need strong, technical, payment transaction processing knowledge to be effective and efficient in their work. This includes developers, QA, customer support and managers in the following areas:

  • Acquirer host
  • Payment processor switch
  • Issuer host
  • Payment terminal integration
  • Troubleshooting transaction failures for banks or acquirers
  • Chip card issuance
  • Consulting in any of the areas above


I hope you’ll enjoy taking this course as much as I enjoyed building it.

They already learnt with us:

  • StandardBank
  • ACS
  • ARCA

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Continue the learning journey

with the follow-on modules

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    ISO8583 Module 3: Advanced

    Continue your journey further into the exciting world of payment transactions with the 3rd module of our flagship course "ISO 8583 and Transaction Processing", and learn how to analyse payment messages and how follow a magstripe transaction from end

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    ISO8583 Module 4: Expert

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