Payment rules architecture

The following diagram depicts the overall relationship of payment rules to the Order Management subsystem and payments-related functions in WebSphere Commerce.

The Order Management subsystem and a Customer Service Representative (CSR) interact with the Payment Rules subcomponent. The Order Management subsystem delegates any payment processing and payment decisions to the Payment Rules subcomponent. CSRs use payment rules for queries and edits.

The Payment Rules subcomponent uses configurable rules to determine what payment actions to take for the order. Payment rules can vary by payment configuration ID, payment method, and by the business event or phase of the order.

The Payment Rules subcomponent interacts with payment back-end systems through the WebSphere Commerce Payments. The WebSphere Commerce Payments provides support of financial operations while hiding the complexity of multiple payment back-end systems and the selection of those systems. The Payment Rules makes payment decisions and the payments plug-in controller and plug-ins make up the new infrastructure of WebSphere Commerce Payments subsystem.

WebSphere Commerce Payments is a software layer that handles interaction with payment plug-ins and the traditional multipayment framework of WebSphere Commerce Payments such that it is compatible with earlier versions. WebSphere Commerce Payments selects which payment plug-in to use to process the financial request and handles payment management services for plug-ins. Plug-ins handle payment protocol details. The WebSphere Commerce Payments Cassette plug-in interacts with the WebSphere Commerce Payments multipayment framework. The system can be extended through the addition of third-party and in-house payment plug-ins to interact with other payment applications.