Card Vault + Recurring Payments

The PhoeniXGate Card Vault operates transparently in conjunction with normal transaction processing, so all approved transactions on all payment methods will result in the generation of a token for the associated payment data. This token is available in several formats depending how it will be used for future transactions:

 

• Numeric: an integer value which is scoped to the merchant on which the transaction was processed.

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• Card-Format: a value is generated for the token such that the format matches that of the original, untokenized value. For example, if a Visa card is used to process a transaction a card-format token for the transaction would be a value matching the format of a Visa card number. This is useful for integrating token processing into legacy systems which expect values for card numbers which pass basic formatting checks.

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• UUID: a globally unique identifier is generated to act as the token. These values are not predictable and offer the most obfuscation of the data, but they are larger than the other token formats and often require modifications to integrated applications to support their storage and use. 

 

For multi-location merchants or other scenarios where it is useful to share payment data among merchants, the Card Vault has the option to enable token sharing. Once enabled, this allows a token generated on one merchant to be used to process a transaction in a different merchant within the same reseller/tenant, so a new token is not needed.

 

The Recurring Billing tool operates on top of the Card Vault and adds the ability to create customer records and contracts which are associated with stored payment data. These objects can then be used to process repeat transactions manually or automatically on a defined schedule.

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• Customer: Defines information about a company or individual including name and contact information. Customers have unique identifiers which can then be used in the processing of future transactions to group transactions for reporting purposes.

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• Stored Payment Data: effectively tokenized payment data in the vault, which is associated with a customer record. A customer may have multiple payment methods stored in this way to be used for manual future payments or automatic recurring billing.

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• Contract: associates a customer, stored payment data, a billing schedule and amounts/limits to allow for automatic recurring billing.​

  • A contract requires an amount to be able to execute automatically, and several optional breakdown amounts may be supplied as well.

  • Limits may be set on the maximum amount to bill for a contract, the maximum number of failed billings to allow, and the maximum number of transactions to run on the account regardless of amount. These options may be used to setup merchant managed payment plans which will automatically stop billing when the plan is complete.

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• A variety of predefined billing schedules are available (daily, weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc.) and custom schedules may also be configured.

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Multiple notification options are available to alert the merchant, customer or both in the case of successful or failed charges against the contract.

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All of the vault and recurring billing functionality is available in both the web portal and via the PhoeniXGate API, which facilitates loading customer records, contract parameters and billing data from a different payment provider, CRM or other external data source.​

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Questions about CardVault or Recurring Payments? Contact us here!