EMV Chip & Pin with Payment Express

Are you installing actual European-style chip & pin devices, or rather P2PE swipers and keypads?  We certainly had a lot of challenges setting up our P2PE devices (RAMP, nested firewalls).  I think it probably took us over a month, working heavily with Tessitura support the whole time.  Now we're sorted and things are mostly fine (we can add new devices without any heartache).

It was frustrating to get the EMV devices working. I think it took about a month initially to get working with RAMP and lots of calls to support.

We ran into issues at almost every step with the firewall port forwarding (easier or harder depending on your type of firewall), Windows hardware driver install (EMV devices not being recognized), Tessitura software install and configuration.  Once you get one working though it should be easier.  To add new devices now we just add additional firewall port forwards and use the one working config file as a template to copy over to other computers after Tessitura software is installed.

There was and is nothing plug and play about the EMV setup and setup is different depending on your processor as well.

It's P2PE keypads for the US. We use Payment Express. It's just been....difficult.

Yeah, we're PE as well.  I don't know who you're working with at Tessitura, but we really seemed to make progress after a handful of GTMs where we could have immediate back and forth on the troubleshooting.  In my experience they really do know their stuff, it's just way more complicated than I expected it to be.

Hi Chris,

We implemented Payment Express iPP350 devices in our box office late last year and plan to roll out more of them shortly. One thing we did that is different from the instructions is we actually run the pxscrcontroller software on the remote desktop server where we run Tessitura, which works regardless of where we access Tessitura. We have to run a unique instance of pxsrcontroller for each person logging in and it must be configured with a distinct port number. It doesn't require any communication between the client and Tessitura other than ensuring that the driver for the iPP350 device is installed on the client and the remote desktop server where Tessitura runs sees the iPP350 USB device. Cardreader Host in TR_MACHINE_SETTINGS is set to 127.0.0.1 as Tessitura just needs to communicate to the software running on the same server.

This simplified the setup and essentially allows us to connect to Tessitura from any location and use an attached iPP350 device for credit card payments. It also means that our resident companies at different sites do not have to touch their firewall for this to work.

I'm guessing this will not work in RAMP at the moment. But, I thought I would mention it as it is a solution that works well; I would suggest self-hosted sites looking at an iPP350 rollout to consider this approach.

Thanks,
David

You'd think that were the case. We got one working on my desks a couple months ago. As work life tends to do, it got in the way and the project got pushed back. We only have four ticket window computers that need the devices. I get all green as far as device status. But when I try to process a transaction, it rejects with an error message of "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it". In that error is the cardreader host IP address as well as the cardreader port. I did just copy my config file on the one we have working. The status is green across the board for the device and Payment Express. For some reason Tessitura and the device don't want to communicate to each other.

We use the iPP350 USB devices as well. Sadly, as RAMP, we have to follow very precise ways to set these up. It sounds like that was an awesome solution that made setup much easier.

We've done quite a few GTMs with Tessitura, Payment Express, and Cisco. I agree that the RAMP staff knows what to do. The hard part is working with clients. I don't think the devices work very well in a more hardened security environment. We have a pretty robust firewall with Cisco so it took a lot of time figuring out the correct port forwarding procedure. We assumed that once that was set, all would be well...just install the config files and such on each workstation, plug in the device, and off they go. It's possible we'll need another call. I'm hoping not as we have a few more items to check off our due diligence list.

Hi Chris, our set up was somewhat frustrating but our IT team was speaking directly with Tessitura staff through each step.  I gather they provided very specific information on which ports to disable on our firewall which was a huge help.  The first device took a couple of hours and each one thereafter an additional hour or so.  There was some additional last minute fixes needed but not a huge amount.  This all occurred either the day before or during the first day we went live. 

Hey Melanie,

I think one of the issues is our firewall. We have a pretty robust one so that could very well be the issue. It's just that we spent SO much time on the phone with Tessitura, Payment Express, and Cisco that it should have been as simple as downloading the Ingenco files, adjust the config file, plug in the device...and off we go. We'll get there...it's just taken WAY too much time to set them up when the majority of our sales are through web or phone.

I didn't even think of our difference in business operations - we're 90% gate sales.  It was mostly our one IT guy, TJ from Tessitura and whomever they had on the phone with them but we may have an entirely different firewall set up.