Transaction Timeout differs for PostFinance Checkout and PostFinance Acquiring

Question:

The timeout for Processors PostFinance Checkout and PostFinance Acquiring seem to be different for PostFinance eFinance.
Isn't this the same processor?

I cannot find any reason to why:

• the error message differs (what happened here differently?)

• the timeout period is different - especially why it is 1H for PFAQ

Answer:

Despite both having “PostFinance” in the name, these are two completely different services which they have (in fact PostFinance Checkout uses the BillingOnline API, which is actually a service of Post, not even PostFinance). So they also have completely different implementations, done by different people, even though they support some of the same payment methods (in this case PostFinance EBanking/EFinance). We unfortunately didn’t always follow consistent logic in these implementations to make it always the same.

To be more specific: PostFinance Acquiring implements its own timeout checking mechanism and fails the transaction after 1h (although it sets the actual timeout to be in 2h). Hence also the failure reason description which is different here since it doesn’t use the system-wide one.

PostFinance Checkout uses the standard mechanism already existing in the payment code to clean up charge attempts which have never been authorised by the customer. This uses the timeout actually specified by the connector, which is here also 2h, and also uses a system-wide failure reason description and not one implemented specifically for this particular processor.