ISO 8583 & Transaction processing

Transaction processing can be difficult to approach. There is not much information freely available, and you need much more than access to a specification or a norm to get started. The worst kept industry secret is that there is no such thing as “the” ISO 8583 protocol. To start with, there are several versions of that norm. But more importantly there are only protocols which are based on ISO 8583, and which use the norm to support business requirements, with implementation choices.

Back when I worked on the ASTREX payment simulator, we used to support over 50 ISO 8583 protocols, from payment networks, payment switch providers, acquirers and so on. It makes for a messy reality, but with the right guidance this course will help you navigate through this maze.

This course was designed so that the next generation of payment specialists do not need to waste time and energy getting their bearings. This course is based on my experience of taking many people through this path over the years. They say that you can’t teach experience, and I’m certainly not claiming that, but there are approaches that can be taken to help students form logical paths in their minds. One such approach is PBL (problem-based learning), and this course makes heavy use of that for all the very technical parts, with practical exercises.

The course is constructed to take students with basic IT knowledge through a path that will lead to a very good understanding of how payment transactions get processed.

This is a technical course, and the path is one of increasing complexity: we build knowledge blocks through the chapters, and we rely on them to continue down the learning path. The course starts with high-level concepts, ensures that the students have a solid IT base for transaction processing, and then teaches everything you need to know about ISO 8583 messages.

Then it starts to zoom out, and explains how to extract information from payment messages. It then follows transactions in an end-to-end fashion, starting from the card capture device, going through the various conversions to reach the card issuer for authorization. We start simple with a magstripe transaction, then add the complexity of EMV and contactless, and finally look at transactions with online PIN and all the infrastructure needed to support it, like dynamic key exchange and DUKPT. The course finishes with an explanation of the compliance and certification processes.

The course contains 10 hours of bite-size videos, split into relevant chapters, and exercises that should take between 22 and 27 hours altogether. You can think of it as a 3- or 4-day course with a highly experienced instructor, but more convenient because you can work at your own speed and on your own schedule. A completion certificate is provided when the course is finished.