Overview of the Payment Processor Enhancements

This topic provides a high level introduction of how a transaction is processed in NetForum and an overview of the payment processor enhancements being implemented.

The enhancements made to the payment processor functionality in NetForum are:

• the ability to use multiple payment processors at one time.
• the ability to freeze gateways, merchant accounts and payment methods.
• the ability for NetForum to pass Level 2 and Level 3 payment information to the payment gateways.
• true payment batch processing where an entire payment batch is processed as a single unit.
• the ability to resume a batch whose processing was interrupted for any reason.
• the account updater that automatically updates a customer's masked credit card number should their account information change.
• improved token security.

Ability to Use Multiple Payment Processors

The ability to use multiple payment processors gives you the ability to seamlessly move from your current payment processor to a new processor without interrupting any of your transactions.

Freezing Payment Gateways, Merchant Accounts, and Payment Methods

NetForum provides the ability to freeze payment gateways, merchant accounts, and payment methods from being used in future transactions while still making them available for recurring transactions (for example recurring gifts and installment payments.) This allows you to migrate your new transactions onto a new gateway, merchant account, or payment method while not interrupting recurring payments that have already been established.

Enabled Support for Level 2 and Level 3 Payment Information

Level 2 and Level 3 payment information is now supported by NetForum and will be passed to the payment gateways.

Payment Batch Processing Improvements

Note: In this section, a payment batch should not be confused with a netFORUM accounting batch that contains invoice, payments, credit, and other accounting transactions. A payment batch in the context of electronic payment processing is a collection of multiple auto-payments for installments or recurring gifts, all of which get delivered from NetForum to the payment processor in one transmission that is called a payment batch. When the payment processor returns the authorization and capture results of these auto-payments back to NetForum, then netFORUM will record them as accounting transactions in an accounting batch. A NetForum “accounting batch” and a “payment batch” of auto-payments, while closely related, are not the same thing.

Previously, payment batches were processed record by record included in the batch. Going forward, payment batches will be processed as a single unit with all transactions in the payment batch being processed simultaneously. This will result in much faster processing times for your transactions. Additionally, in the event that the processing of a payment batch is interrupted, NetForum now provides a method of resuming that payment batch's processing where it left off without having to reprocess the entire payment batch again.

Account Updater

The Account Updater is a feature that retrieves updated masked credit card or account information from the payment gateways and makes it available in NetForum. This ensures that on-going payments can continue even if a customer's card number changes.

Profiles and Child Forms

The following profiles and child forms have been added or updated to accommodate the payment processor enhancements:

• Payment Gateway Profile
  • Merchant Accounts Child Form
  • Change Log
• Merchant Account Profile
  • Merchant Account Settings Child Form
  • Change Log
• Merchant Account Settings Profile
  • Change Log