Overview

A Payment Gateway is an e-commerce application service provider that authorises credit card payments for e-businesses. CRM.COM is integrated with multiple payment gateways from which you can choose to handle your customer's online payments. In particular the following payment gateways are available:

• Stripe
• Braintree 
• PayPal

Payment Gateways at a Glance

As already mentioned CRM.COM is integrated with multiple payment gateways and you can choose those one that you already have an account with. To use any payment gateway you are required to have an account registered with the payment gateway (which serves as the company's account). 

With regards to CRM.COM, every customer has an account through which their credit cards can be registered (for payment gateway use). A payment gateway customer account is automatically created by the system to link the CRM.COM account to the payment gateway and the cards registered in CRM.COM. (Only a part of the card information is kept in CRM.COM, for security purposes)

Given that the Payment Gateway Provider is set up, when performing a payment in CRM.COM using one of the registered cards, a request is sent to the payment gateway to deduct money from the customer payment gateway account. If there are enough funds in the payment gateway customer account, the money is deducted and a response is sent to CRM.COM to update the customer's account accordingly, otherwise, the payment gateway rejects the payment and informs CRM.COM accordingly.

Setting up Payment Gateways 

In order to start using payment gateways you must enable and configure the payment gateway provider associated to the payment gateway(s) you will be working with.

Payment Gateway Providers 

The payment gateway provider implements the provisioning protocol used by the third-party payment gateway based on the generic provisioning information received from CRM.COM provisioning layer. The Payment Gateway provider is responsible for sending the actual requests to the payment system as well as receiving a response. 

You will need to setup and activate each provider you wish to use. The information required to connect to the provider such as the URL, username, passwords etc. must be provided in the Authorisation Settings section during setup. 

As you can have multiple providers enabled, for each provider you must specify the Payment Method(s) (in the Payments section) that will activate a request to be sent to the payment gateway for a payment from the customer's payment gateway account. The same goes for refunds; that is, for each provider you must specify the Refund Method(s) (in the Refunds section) that will send a request for a refund to the customer's payment gateway account.

In case that a payment made from a customer for some reason has been cancelled (i.e. returned a faulty product) in CRM.COM then the payment must also be cancelled and money returned to the customer's payment gateway account. Through the payment gateway account, you can select the Payment Cancellation Type that will trigger a request to the payment gateway to return the money to the customer payment gateway account.

A Payment Preference is actually what links the CRM.COM account to the payment gateway. Payment preference is used to define the preferred method of paying any outstanding amount. It is through the Payment Preferences registered on the CRM.COM customer account that the cards can be registered. 

Each payment preference configured in the system can only be associated to one Payment Gateway Provider. When a CRM.COM customer account is registered, one or more payment preferences must also be enabled on the account. In this way, when a payment preference associated to a payment gateway is enabled on the CRM.COM customer account, then that CRM.COM account is instantly associated to the payment gateway through an automatically created payment gateway customer account.  Every time a new payment preference is set up in the system and associated to a payment gateway, it is automatically added to the Payment Gateway provider configuration. 

Some payment gateways only support specific Currencies; if this is the case then when setting up the provider you must specify the currencies which can be supported.

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Using Payment Gateways

Once the payment gateway(s) is/are set up your customers can begin making payments using their online accounts.

Registering a card

A payment gateway card is used to manage the online payments through the payment gateway.  For security purposes, only a part of the information (which is required to register the card with the payment gateway) is kept in CRM.COM, while the rest is kept by the payment gateway.

Cards are registered in payment preferences defined on the customer's Account. Each Payment Preference is linked with a payment gateway, therefore by registering a card through a payment preference you are linking both the account and the card to a specific payment gateway.

1. Navigate to Finance > Accounts. 
2. Locate an account and select to EDIT the account.
3. Select the 'Account Preferences' tab and go to the 'Payment Preferences' section.
4. Select a payment preferences that is based on a payment classification associated with the gateway to which you would like to register the card.
   
5. Fill out the card information and VERIFY using the respective button.
   • To add more cards click on the 'View Customer cards' link and then select '+New card' and fill out the card information.
   • Select the card that should be used as default.
6. Select whether to 'Opt in for subscriptions' and/or 'Opt in for purchases', and whether the registered billing address should be used.
   • Opt in for subscriptions: The payment preference is selected to be used in the payment of subscription related invoices e.g. Billing Run or Bill Subscription. The payment preference will be used automatically whenever the Credit Limit is about to be exceeded (including the FT's amount) and is available only to payment preferences which are related to one payment gateway provider or a wallet.
   • Opt in for purchases: The payment preference is selected to be used in the payment of one off purchases e.g. Invoices. The payment preference will be used automatically whenever the Credit Limit is about to be exceeded (including the FT's amount) and is available only to payment preferences which are related to one payment gateway provider or a wallet

Recurring payments can be used to automatically settle bills or to top-up the wallet of an account when funds are running low. 

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Making payments

Once a customer account is associated to a payment gateway and given that the payment gateway account has enough funds then the payment can be processed through the gateway. There are two types of payments - a one-time payment where the customer chooses to pay for a purchase made (once), or for recurring payments, for example, use the card to pay for a monthly subscription.

Making one-time payments

Using the card to make one-time payments, is as simple as making any kind of payment, where the card with which the customer wishes to pay is selected and the payment completed.

Making recurring payments

If customers wish to use their registered card to pay for subscriptions which are billed on a recurring basis, without the need to provide consent every time, then it's imperative that the card is marked to be used for recurring payments (Opted in for subscriptions) when registering the card. If this is enabled, then money will be deducted directly from their card every time money is needed to cover for a recurring customer's invoice.

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Returning money for cancelled payments

If a payment already processed by the payment gateway and paid for by the customer's account to your company's account has been cancelled, then money must be returned to the customer's payment gateway account. To achieve this it is required that you configure specific payment cancellations types, that when used a request is sent to the payment gateway and money is returned to the customer account.

The payment cancellation type is set up on the Payment Gateway Provider definition.

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Refunding customers

Refunds can be made to customer's payment gateway accounts subject to payment gateway integration. 

If refunds are supported, then every time a refund transaction takes place in CRM.COM the customer's payment gateway account is also refunded (money added to). Refund requests are triggered by CRM.COM if the refund method defined at the payment gateway provider is the one used for the refund method used on the customer's account.

Managing Payment Gateway Requests

A Payment Gateway Request is used to log the requests that are sent to payment gateways for submitting a payment, payment cancellation or refund. They are usually automatically created by the system upon a specific event. These events are

• Posting Payment
• Posting Payment Cancellation
• Posting Refund

Other actions that can trigger such events are

• Posting a Payment before Bill (Normal Billing)
• Automatic Recurring Payments Process
• Voiding Wallet Transactions that result into Cancelling Related Payments

Once the requests are created they are sent to the payment gateway which will process them accordingly and then will send back a response, either accepting or rejecting the transaction. 

It's possible to monitor these requests through the respective screen (for each provider) via the Manage Payment Gateway Requests link.

It is important to note that requests can have one of four life cycle states: 

• Pending
• Under Processing
• Posted 
• Rejected

Pending and Under Processing requests are the ones that have not yet been processed by the payment gateway. Once processed they are updated to either Posted or Rejected. 

Handling generic gateway requests

If you choose a payment gateway which is not already integrated to CRM.COM you should enable and configure Generic payment gateway. Generic Payment Gateway Providers only support the partial handling of online transactions. They create payment requests that can be further processed by CRM.COM WEB APIs. The APIs extract the requests and update them once the payments are handled by the gateway.

Through WEB APIs the life cycle state of a request can be updated to one of the following states:

• Under Processing
• Posted
• Rejected

Refer to Integrating Payment Systems for comprehensive instructions on how to integrate CRM.COM with a payment gateway system using WEB API.

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Additional Processes and Automations for Payment Gateways

Instant discount refunds (back-end reduction)

Rewards participants can earn awards from a purchase and use them for an instant discount, usually applied at the point of sale (POS) as a front-end reduction.

Back-end reduction can be offered through a payment gateway, where the customer pays the regular price at the POS and is refunded the discount amount by CRM.COM (through the gateway). Funds are returned to the customer's bank or online account (e.g., PayPal). In order to apply this option, a refund method that will trigger the refund in the gateway provider must be selected and the back-end reduction settings of the merchant must be configured.

Refer to multi-merchant reward platform for set up instructions and for more information on back-end reduction.

Communicating payment gateway requests and cards

Payment gateway request and card information can be communicated to customers through the Communications' page by adding them to the Referring To entities.  You can use tags related to the requests and cards (text that is automatically replaced by values specific to selected records) when creating the communications. Tags are available for selection by typing '#'. 
Refer to the Communications manual for a complete list of the tags.

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