Activating the CVV field for credit cards in CubeCart
We have just recently launched our new website, in which we chose to use CubeCart to power our online store, where we sell back issues of the magazine and plan to add quite a few ecommerce products to in the future. Of course, this is in no way an endorsement of CubeCart, since Practical eCommerce isn’t in to that kind of thing. It is, however, a statement that for our needs that is the choice we made.
So to benefit others who are using CubeCart, or those looking into various shopping cart options, I wanted to outline something that came up once we had the software installed and were doing the final touches. We noticed that on the credit card information page of the checkout process there was no field for the CVV security code. This is that little three-digit code on the back of most cards, and the four-digit code on the front of an American Express card. This is not such a great thing because it opens us up to fraud more than the customer, although I’m sure customers wouldn’t be too impressed by an online checkout that doesn’t require that information.
It turns out that the functionality is there with the CubeCart installation, but the CVV field is not activated. Also, I should note that the payment module we use is the Authorize.Net AIM module. I am not sure about other payment modules and whether this information applies to them. However, you want to first find the template for the credit card payment page, which will be located in the folder for that payment module ( Modules > Gateway > Authorize_AIM ). Inside that directory is a file called form.tpl, which is the template file for the credit card information file. Open that file in a text editor or HTML editor.
Find the text input code on the page, where the credit card information is entered. You will notice that there is a section that is commented out with HTML comments. This is the missing CVV field, which can be activated by deleting the comment tag before ( <!– ) and after ( –> ) that section. Upload this template file and you should see the CVV security code field appear in your payment form.
In addition, that “form.tpl” file is where you would look if you wanted to customize or change that payment form. Half the battle with “skinning” an online store is knowing where to look for the files.
