My Merchant Account Blog

Credit Card Testing Numbers

Saturday, April 12, 2008

When you complete a credit card transaction on an electronic payment gateway, chances are very good you will be charged for the transaction. The transaction is going through a transaction provider and to a card association (Visa / MasterCard / Discover / American Express). The card association charges a fee to access their environment. To overcome this, LinkPoint created staging servers. Through this staging server, a web developer can mimic a transaction to verify the transaction and response.  Keep in mind though that getting a test account is not as easy as it used to be.  In the past, you would submit your information and within minutes, a test store would be created.  However, we were told that you need to be a merchant to actually have access to this staging server - which beats the purpose of getting a test account.  This is another reason we have switched our support from LinkPoint (First Data Global Gateway) to the Quantum Gateway.

Since credit card numbers are developed using the Lunh's method or mod-10 algorithm, not just any number that meets these requirements can be sent. These test credit card numbers can be used on your live LinkPoint account. If you use these credit card numbers on your live (production) LinkPoint account, your account will be charged accordingly. If these numbers are used on a testing (staging) server, no fees will be collected.  These card numbers can usually be used on most testing accounts from the other electronic payment gateways like Quantum Gateway / Authorize.net / etc.

Card Type	Card Number	Exp Date	Amount	Number of Digits
Visa	4005550000000019	current mm/yy	$1.00	16 digits
MasterCard	5424180279791765	current mm/yy	$1.00	16 digits
Discover	6011000993010978	current mm/yy	$1.00	16 digits
American Express (Corporate)	372700997251009	current mm/yy	$1.00	15 digits

If the numbers above are used on your production (live) account, you will receive an approved response.

If you need to receive a declined transaction on your live LinkPoint account, use these numbers:

Card Type	Card Number	Expiration Date	Number of Digits
Visa	4111111111111111	any mm/yy	16 digits
Visa	4012888888881881	any mm/yy	16 digits
MasterCard	5215521552155215	any mm/yy	16 digits
MasterCard	5105105105105100	any mm/yy	16 digits
American Express (Corporate)	378282246310005	any mm/yy	15 digits
American Express	371449635398431	any mm/yy	15 digits
Discover	6011111111111117	any mm/yy	16 digits
Discover	6011000990139424	any mm/yy	16 digits
JCB	3530111333300000	any mm/yy	16 digits
JCB	3566002020360505	any mm/yy	16 digits

Keep in mind that if you use your live LinkPoint account for any transaction, you will be charged. The test store from LinkPoint comes with the LinkPoint Basic / HTML, LinkPoint API, and LinkPoint Virtual terminal. You will be able to mimic LinkPoint transactions in a testing environment with be assessed any fees.

The LinkPoint Gateway

The LinkPoint Gateway is one of the larger electronic payment gateways in the United States.  It was one of the first Internet payment gateways to offer a staging server for web developers.  For some of its competitors, it was years before they offered a testing environment.

After First Data completely owned 100% of Cardservice International, the LinkPoint gateway was the largest electronic payment gateway using First Data's platforms.  The LinkPoint payment gateway was still being branded as YourPay through some of First Data's partner channels.  And LinkPoint basically consumed the SurePay electronic payment gateway through mergers and acquisitions.

You might still hear YourPay being used today, but the LinkPoint gateway can also be called Integrated Internet Payments (IIP).