Credit Card Expiration Data: consistent documentation

[alexsasharegan]

It would seem that the documentation available at http://developer.authorize.net/api/reference/index.html#payment-transactions-charge-a-credit-card differs from the usage in the sample code available at https://github.com/AuthorizeNet/sample-code-php/blob/master/PaymentTransactions/charge-credit-card.php#L23.

I'm revisiting some cc processing code we implemented several months ago, and I see that we used the format MM-YYYY. Have there been changes in this? What is the correct format?

[adavidw]

The underlying API will support sending an expiration date in nearly any reasonable combination of month and year and separator. These are formats that are all acceptable (but still probably not a comprehensive list):

• YYYY-MM
• MM-YY
• MM-YYYY
• MMYY
• MMYYYY
• YYYY/MM
• MM/YY
• MM/YYYY
• YYYY,MM
• MM,YY
• MM,YYYY

Listing all possible formats in every possible place that we discuss expiration date is probably not a good idea, though, for a few reasons. One, we don't want to just say "any combination in any order will work" because not all will. Two, listing every possibility that's actually coded for is bulky and cumbersome. Three, while this particular API won't change what it accepts, future products might be more constrained in what they accept, so we don't want people to get in the habit of using MMYY if we offer other products that require YYYY-MM, for example.

So, to answer your question of what the "correct" format is: The "correct" format would be the one that we want to guarantee is supported by future products as well. That's a gYearMonth (YYYY-MM). The documentation should reflect that, although not all sample code has been changed to reflect that. I'll add something internally to track at least going through our sample code repos and doc samples to make things consistent there.

[alexsasharegan]

Thank you! That's what I was looking for—the most versatile format across all your APIs. Many Thanks!

Feel free to close this, or leave open for internal tracking.