ISO 8583 Tutorial – Introduction for Beginners

Introduction

reference Jimmy Blog
All (or most?) financial transaction is using ISO 8583 standard, which at first I thought is a complicated standard. But after learn and see how it implemented it’s not as complex as I thought.
In this post I will try to explain (based on my experience before I go deeper on the programming side.
Although it’s a ’standard’ I see that’s many variant for the detail implementation of ISO 8583.
Financial transaction is communication between 2 system through socket connection.
After connection established, each system can send message in ISO 8583 format which commonly will be request and the other system will response.
From my experience the communication will be start with sign on and then the financial transactions.
Periodically an echo message is send to make sure the other system is still alive.
If I break down the flow:

1. System A open connection to System B (through specific IP and Port).
2. Connection established.
3. System A send Sign-On request message.
4. System B send Sign-on response message.
5. System A will start send Echo request message periodically (e.g every 1 minute).
6. System B will send Echo response message when receive Echo request message.
7. When financial transaction happen, System A will send Transaction request message.
8. Then System B will send Transaction response message.
9. If something wrong happen (usually timeout so System A didn’t get the response), System A will send Reversal request message to cancel the previous transaction.
10. System B will send Reversal response message.

I hope my explaination give clear basic understanding about the flow.
Next the question will be what’s this ISO 8583 message looks like.
We can separate the message into 3 parts:

• Message Type Identifier
• Bitmaps
• Data Elements

ISO8583 – structure

Message Type Identifier

Message Type Identifier or MTI is 4 digits numeric that describe the message type. It will explain the message function.
Commonly used:
- 02xx : Financial Message (e.g 0200 for request, 0210 for response)
- 04xx : Reversal Message (e.g 0400 for request, 0410 for response)
- 08xx : Network Management Message (e.g 0800 for request, 0810 for response)
* I found more detail & complete list at wikipedia

Bitmaps

Bitmaps is field that contain information about which data element is presence or absence. Based on the variant it could be 16 hexadecimal characters.
An example will make it clear.
The bitmap is:
B220000000100000
If we break down to binary (I hope you understand how to convert hexadecimal to binary:) :
1011001000100000000000000000000000000000000100000000000000000000
Since I’m nice I create graphical illustration.

Bitmap sample
You can see that in this bitmap it explain that data element in the message is 1, 3, 4, 7, 11.
There’s special meaning of first bit of bitmap, if it has value of 1 that mean there’s secondary bitmap.
And what the hell is this secondary bitmap?
Since 16 hexadecimal characters will can only contain info of 64 data element, some transactions contain data element number 64 – 128. That mean the 16 hexadecimal characters is not sufficient.
With set the first bit to ‘1′ that will inform there’s additional bitmap, which is another 16 hexadecimal characters.
So in this case the full bitmap example should be:
B2200000001000000000000000800000
Convert to binary:
10110010001000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000100000000000000000000000
From the bitmap, data element presence in the message : 3, 4, 7, 11, 105.

Sample Bitmap complete

Data Elements

Data Elements is the essense of the whole ISO message, contain information about the transaction (transaction type, amount, customer id, etc).
Each data element have their on format, attribute and length.
Each data element number also have standard purpose, for example DE #4 is transaction amount.
I will explain based on the example above, since this is only introduction I don’t want to confuse beginner reader. In wikipedia there’s full list.
For our examples, the data element list:

• #3 – Processing code – n 6
• #4 – Transaction amount – n 12
• #7 – Transmission date & time – n 10
• #11 – Systems trace audit number – n 6
• #44 – Additional response data – an ..25
• #105 – Reserved for ISO use – ans …999

To make it practical let’s just use example.
We want to send :

• DE #3 : 201234
• DE #4 : 10000
• DE #7 : 1107221830
• DE #11 : 123456
• DE #44 : A5DFGR
• DE #105 : ABCDEFGHIJ 1234567890

Using above value, the data in data elements :

ISO8583 – de
Based on the type each value will be formatted.

• a : alpha (including blanks)
• n : numeric value
• s : special characters
• x (no dot) : length is x (fixed)
• .x (one dot) :  max length is x (1 digit in front as length info)
• ..xx (two dot) :  max length is xx (2 digit in front as length info)
• …xxx (three dot) :  max length is xxx (3 digit in front as length info)

ISO Message

From above examples the whole ISO message will be :
0200B2200000001000000000000000800000201234000000010000110722183012345606A5DFGR021ABCDEFGHIJ 1234567890

Conclusion

Ok. This article already long enough
Actually I always prefer short article, but on this case it’s cannot be to short.
Anyway, I hope this article is clear enough for you.
Like always, just drop question in the comment if you confused.

How to Get More Facebook Likes for Your Page

 

10 Easy Ways to Get More Facebook Likes for Your Business Page

 In order to achieve success on Facebook you need a community. That’s a fact. If you don’t have a community, you don’t have anyone listening to you, and if there’s no one listening to you, it’s difficult to build brand awareness and deliver ROI.
You need a community filled with people who like you and share your content with like-minded friends. But it’s not just about the quantity of Facebook likes that you collect, it’s about the quality; attracting Facebook likes from a group targeted to suit your business goals whose comments (and endorsement!) can increase your shares on Facebook.
So here are ten quick and easy tips to drive targeted Facebook likes to your business page.

1. Complete your Facebook Page Profile

Your Facebook Page is the first thing people see when they come to visit you on Facebook. Let visitors know why they should like you! Create a catchy description and make sure you categorize your page correctly. Also make sure to list your address, phone number and hours of operation (if applicable). Not only will this inform your potential followers, it will tell Facebook what kind of organization you are you so they know to show your page when users are searching for companies like yours – which can increase your Facebook likes even more!

2. Ask friends  and other contacts to like you on Facebook

Friends are like underpants. Some snap under pressure, some are a little twisted, but some will give you support. When you first create a Facebook Page like this PAGE invite your supportive friends, family and business partners to like your Facebook Page. These initial likes will give you higher social media credibility and visibility. Then, alert your customers, prospects and your other social communities, and promote your Facebook page anywhere you mention your website. If people don’t know your Facebook page exists, they can’t like it.

3. Add social plugins to your website

Visitors on your website should be able to  find your Facebook Page easily. My recommendation is to use Facebook’s Social Plugins, like the Like box plugin, to get more Facebook likes. These plugins include a like button, your recent posts, and pictures of some of your fans.

4. Find out what interests your community

With Facebook’s new Graph Search it’s really easy to find out what interests your target community, and post relevant content to increase Facebook likes.
Here’s a real example:
I have a Facebook Page Shocking fb Tircks on facebook . To learn more about my target community’s interests, I search for “how many people like facebook trick".

This information is great to have at hand when I’m thinking about what to post on my Facebook page. By posting content that my audience is interested in (for example, suggesting how to secure your password and all) they will share it with their friends and help me get more Facebook likes. This same content will also attract likes from people who come to my Facebook page from my website, email signature, or a Facebook search.

5. Use Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are another great way to increase Facebook likes. To get the most out of your ads, you can target by your community’s interests to find people similar to your current fans.
In the image below, you can see how I’ve used the information that I got from Graph Search and how I’ve targeted my ad for my new pizza place.

Experiment with different types of ads to see what works best for your organization, and make sure you choose the option that allows Facebook users to like your page directly from the ad.

6. Run a contest

There are many companies that have created successful contests on Facebook that resulted in many thousands of Facebook likes. But there are some things that you need to know before you create your own contest. For starters, make sure that your contest follows Facebook’s promotion guidelines. Your contest must use a Facebook app, which allows you to create a fan-gate, so that only those who first like your page can participate in the contest. Apps also have a unique URL, so you can promote your contest with a Facebook ad and increase Facebook likes even more.
Also, when you create a contest make sure that your app is working for mobile users, that the content of the contest is funny, that it’s easy to participate and that the contest encourage users to share their result and participation with their friends.

7. Like, and interact with, other companies

Did you know that you can engage with other company pages as your Business Page on Facebook? This is a great way to build awareness among like-minded companies and their followers.  To do this, visit your Facebook Page, click on “Edit Page” in your Admin Panel and select “Use Facebook as YourPage.”

Finding companies to like and interact with is easy. Use Graph search and search for e.g. companies, pages, places that is of interests for your company and like these Pages (you can’t like personal profiles).

After you have liked some Pages, you can view your company’s Newsfeed and engage with the pages you like. Not only is the company likely to follow you back, but their engagement with your page will help you increase Facebook likes amongst their followers as well.

8. Publish engaging content

It’s important to publish engaging, entertaining and interesting posts on a regular basis, and to keep an eye out for the posts that get the most engagement. If your posts are valuable to your followers, then they will share your posts with their friends, helping you increase your Facebook likes. Images are among the best types of post for driving engagement so make sure you publish images your followers can relate to and will like. You may also want to include calls to action in some of your posts, asking followers to like, comment or share your content, or ask your community a question.

9. Be active

By now you know that you should publish engaging, interesting and entertaining content. But how often should you post? There is no magic number but there are best practices and analytics to guide you. Post at least one status update per day, and experiment with the timing of your posts to see when the majority of your followers are active. People are unlikely to like your Facebook page if you don’t post regularly – and they certainly won’t engage with your content (or help you get more likes) if they don’t see your posts.

10. Measure, analyze and learn

Use Facebook Insights to find useful metrics on your page performance. You can see things like reach (how many users are seeing your posts), engaged users (how many users engage with your posts) and new likes (when and why do you get new followers). These metrics will help you understand what’s driving your likes and engagement, so that you can adjust your posts accordingly. If you would like to know if you have good engagement, or want other recommendations for improvement, try out our free Facebook analytics tool, LikeAlyzer.

Now you people think what about my own Website page, let me tell you I have more than 20 pages some of them have more than 2 lacs users and I am the only person who handles this.
check this out AASHIQUI2.
Would you like to add any tips for getting more Facebook likes? Did I forget something? Please add a comment and, if you like the post, feel free to share it with your friends.
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