PaySwarm Alpha 5 released

We're happy to announce the release of PaySwarm Alpha 5. It has been
almost two months since the last release. This release focused on fixing
up a number of usability issues, CSS rendering issues, and a big chunk
of it was focused on fixing Internet Explorer 9 bugs. In all, over 385
bug fixes were performed to the code base since the last release.

The latest release and demo can be found here:

https://dev.payswarm.com/

We still have some bug smashing and load testing to go, but we're
inching ever closer to a launch of the service.

Here's what is new in this release:

New Payment Token Verification Flow
-----------------------------------

The data stored on a PaySwarm Authority for credit card or bank account
information is called a payment token. Some payment tokens are
automatically usable, such as credit cards. Some payment tokens require
verification before they can be used, such as bank accounts. The payment
token verification flow for verifying bank accounts has been improved in
this version of the software. The flow is pretty typical of most systems
that interact with the banking network:

1. Enter your bank account details.
2. The PaySwarm Authority deposits two small amounts into your bank
   account. This can take up to 7 days due to the slowness of the
   legacy banking network.
3. You enter both amounts into the PaySwarm system to prove that you
   have access to the receiving bank account.
4. The bank account is marked as verified, and you can pull money
   out of the account.

The demo simulates step #2 of the process above by sending you an e-mail
with the two amounts after a 1-2 minute delay.

While depositing money using a credit card is more immediate than a bank
account, the banking network fees are higher, typically a credit
card-based deposit is $0.15 + 2.19% where a bank account-based deposit
is around $0.50 + 0.99%. In general, if you're depositing $30 or more,
it's better to do it using a bank account-based deposit.

We have also added the ability to delete payment tokens and added checks
to make sure that if a payment token fails to work that it's
automatically disabled.

To use this new feature:

1. Login at: https://dev.payswarm.com/
2. Click Settings (at the top of the screen).
3. Click "Add Bank Account" at the lower-right of the screen.

Visual credit card/bank account selector
----------------------------------------

We have implemented a visual credit card and bank account selector that
makes it easier to determine if your funding source is a credit card or
bank account.

To use this feature:

1. Login at: https://dev.payswarm.com/
2. Select the drop-down beside one of your Accounts.
3. Click "Deposit"

Browser Fixes
-------------

We were surprised to find out that even Internet Explorer 9 is fairly
far behind the other browsers when it comes to standards-compliance and
bugs. Firefox also gave us a few of problems that we didn't expect.
Google Chrome runs the entire website like a champ and was the
easiest/best browser to work with when building and testing the product.
The site has been tested and runs in each major desktop browser. Mobile
is on our list of browsers to test, but we may not get to that until
after the commercial release.

Those are the major changes, here is a high-level changelog summary for
the past two months:

  * Added more tests for auto-purchase, adding credit cards and
    bank accounts.
  * Set bank account expiration time to 30 days.
  * Debian/Ubuntu packaging fixes for install, startup and shutdown.
  * Advanced CSS to visually differentiate between credit card and
    bank accounts.
  * Fixing bugs in IE9 and Windows when dealing with EOT fonts.
  * Change selector display of accounts and budgets.
  * Fixes to ensure that CSS is more responsive when the screen
    is changed.
  * Stacked modal fixes to ensure proper modal is displayed.
  * Add bank agreement checkbox, ensure email is available.
  * Ensure that modals are singletons to aid automated testing.
  * IE9 fixes for input fields.
  * Disable caching of non-static resources.
  * Use SVG to fix IE9 rounded borders+gradient bug.
  * Use href="#" *only* for dropdown toggle links as it breaks IE9
    if we don't.
  * Update to AngularJS v1.0.4.
  * Updates to auditing tools to all financial algorithms work
    as expected.
  * Define console.log when undefined (for IE9).
  * Include placeholder polyfill for Firefox and IE.
  * Handle declined withdrawals to bank account.
  * Smooth the process of entering and verifying bank account details.
  * Redirect back to login screen when switching identities
    w/expired session.
  * Better generic error handling.
  * Disable payment tokens when verify transactions fail.
  * Make payment gateway-related errors more friendly.
  * Improve registration identity selection.
  * Context-based hover-help for input fields.
  * Update jQuery to 1.8.3.
  * Full code audit for every file in source control.
  * Add URL query argument validation to all services.
  * Update to Boostrap 2.2.1.
  * Check and clamp budget values.
  * Include bank account verification data in email in
    non-production mode.
  * Make modals scrollable on webkit mobile devices.
  * Make settings and dashboard look more consistent.
  * Vendor registration requires an address to be set.
  * Ensure that a purchase requires and address and account.
  * Store asset provider and acquirer addresses in digital contract.
  * Ensure key has not been revoked when verifying.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: HTML5 and RDFa 1.1
http://manu.sporny.org/2012/html5-and-rdfa/

Received on Wednesday, 19 December 2012 18:09:47 UTC