Vortex Release (September 21, 2023)

Settlement and Recruitment Bots Scaling

An enhancement was made to scale the settlement and recruitment bots, allowing them to handle higher volumes and distributed workloads more effectively. The following improvements were implemented:

• Data partitioning was introduced to enable efficient processing and load distribution.
• Multiple pods can now be configured with a variable number of partitions (greater than 1) to process high data volumes.
• Octo integration allows easy adjustment of the number of containers and deployment scope.
• Merchants are no longer duplicated across pods, ensuring each merchant is processed by a single pod.
• Logs now include the partition number for easier tracking and confirmation of separate processing.

Storage Resilience

The streamliner was successfully updated to version 1.127.646, bringing significant fixes and improvements. The most notable change is the addition of support for es-direct. The "refresh consumer" component was also deployed as required.

VISA Consumer Bill Payment Program

To support the Consumer Bill Payment Service Fee Program, a new API field named 'Business Application Identifier' was introduced, with "CB" (Consumer Bill Payment) being the only supported value. Updates were made to various components:

• TapTran Settlement Update: For bill payment transactions, the Taptran settlement files now include "CB" as the Business Application Identifier.
• TSYS Settlement Update: The General Extension Record (EXT) now includes the business application identifier.
• VISA 0100 Message: For BillPayment transactions, "CB" is sent in the payment request's Business Application Identifier field and appears in the authorization message.

Amex and Discover Keys in Redis Cache

Support was added to store and retrieve Amex and Discover keys (PIN session keys) from Redis cache, replacing the previous SQL Server storage method. This change eliminates the dependency on SQL Server connections and improves system performance by allowing ACS to efficiently pull data from Redis.

Bug Fixes

Fiserv North PTS Certification

As part of the recertification effort for Fiserv North, several changes were made to accommodate Level 2 and Level 3 data generation. The following record types were added to the settlement files:

• Level 2 Data: New records for XN01, XM02, XD23, XD24, XD25 were added to generate necessary data for Visa, Mastercard, Amex transactions, including merchant details, customer code, and tax-related information.
• Level 3 Data: Records XD31, XD32, XD33, and XD34 were introduced to generate necessary Level 3 data for the settlement files, including additional merchant and transaction details.

SaleCompletion Route Validation Error

An issue was identified where the saleCompletion route failed due to a validation error: "Customer.taxId must be a string." This occurred because the taxId was encrypted in the original authorization transaction, and it needed to be decrypted to pass model validation. The issue was resolved by making appropriate code changes to handle the decryption process for the taxId correctly.