Debit and Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) transactions that require a cardholder-entered PIN must be submitted to Portico with a PIN block. The programmer guide for your PIN pad device contains details on how to obtain the PIN block including information on the request and response messages.

The response message to a PIN block request includes data containing a serial number and PIN. This data is used to generate the PIN block in the format required by Portico.

The format of the PIN Block response is as follows: <STX>71[fkey flag][Key Serial#][PIN]<ETX>[LRC]

The following table provides the encrypted PIN Block response field values:

Field	Length	Value and Description
STX	hexadecimal	0x02
Message ID	2	This value is always "71".
[fkey flag]	1	This value is always "0". This field is kept to retain old model compatibility.
[Key Serial#]	10..20	The key serial number used in encrypting a PIN. It is included only when the PIN is entered. Format: hexadecimal string
[PIN]	16	Encrypted PIN block format: hexadecimal string
<ETX>	hexadecimal	<0x03>
[LRC]	1	Checksum

Example

The following is an example of an encrypted PIN block response from an E3 PIN entry request. It is in a Derived Unique Key Per Transaction (DUKPT) format.

The example uses the following values:

[fkey flag] = 0
[Key Serial#] = 1111111111111111
[PIN] = 2222222222222222

 The response should be as follows:

<STX>71011111111111111112222222222222222<ETX>[LRC]

The format for mapping the encrypted PIN block response data to Portico debit sale PIN block is as follows:

<PinBlock>[PIN][Key Serial#]</PinBlock>

Map the encrypted PIN block response data to Portico debit sale PIN block as follows:

<DebitSale>
<Block1>
…
<PinBlock>22222222222222221111111111111111</PinBlock>
…
</Block1>
</DebitSale>