WooCommerce Authorize.net SIM extension release

We’re happy to announce the release of our WooCommerce Authorize.net SIM extension! This plugin provides a new, PCI-compliant payment method via Authorize.net. Customers are taken off-site to a hosted payment page to complete a transaction (similar to PayPal Standard).

SIM Pay Page

The plugin also supports eChecks, letting you securely process ACH transactions.

The old “SIM”, a bundled AIM gateway

Previously, a very old SIM / Authorize.net emulation protocol was bundled into our WooCommerce Authorize.net AIM extension. This let merchants who had Authorize.net SIM accounts run emulation transactions via this gateway.

However, most merchants using SIM wanted to be able to use the secure, hosted payment page that Authorize.net SIM provides rather than using the on-site emulation gateway, which required some large changes to our plugin. We decided to break this out as a unique SIM plugin instead for these reasons:

• Using the hosted payment page required a complete rewrite to the way the extension processed transactions anyway.
• Merchants could only offer either AIM or emulation (SIM) once at a time (as you had to switch gateway modes), so having them bundled into the same plugin didn’t provide any real benefit.
• Some merchants use emulation for a different reason, such as running transactions through another gateway (ie eProcessing Network), so we still needed this emulation mode available.

The New WooCommerce Authorize.net SIM

WooCommerce Authorize.net SIM now provides a stand-alone solution that works with Authorize.net’s SIM hosted payment page, making this an upgraded and far-improved integration. The ability to add eCheck support was also a result of creating a stand-alone plugin.

Our AIM integration will remain available, and the emulation mode can still be used by merchants whose payment processor allows for Authorize.net emulation. This new plugin provides a better payment method for merchants specifically looking for modern SIM / hosted payment page support.

Want to learn more? You can check out the sales page at WooCommerce or read up on the documentation 🙂