Payment Rules
The Payment Rules subcomponent in WebSphere Commerce makes payment decisions based on payment rules. It determines what types of payment actions should be executed at specific times in the life cycle of an order or the return of a purchase. When a request for a payment action occurs within WebSphere Commerce, the payment rule that applies to the request is checked and the appropriate payment actions are taken.
Generally, the flow of a Payment Rule is as follows:
- An order or return event occurs and payment activity is triggered.
- The Payment Rules subcomponent reads the payment rule that applies to the business event situation to determine what payment actions should be performed.
- The Payment Rules subcomponent executes the necessary payment actions to move the payment or refund into the required target state.
The payment actions that are started during the processing of events vary according to the payment methods used to make the purchases and their corresponding payment rules. The payment actions that take place are determined through the use of Payment Rules. The payment rule that should be used by a particular payment method is specified through a payment method configuration XML file. The Payment Rules used by your system are triggered by the order life cycle events taking place in the system. When the parameters in the XML files are evaluated by the system to be true, a predetermined list of actions is triggered.
For example, the payment actions that should occur dynamically when a credit card is used are typically different than the payment actions defined for a check or gift certificate. Through payment rules , you can establish the business practices that should be followed when an order is paid for or when a refund is granted for a returned item.
The following business practices are examples of rules that can be defined:
- If the customer uses a credit card to pay for the order, approve the payment when the order is captured, but deposit the payment only after shipment of the order is confirmed.
- If the customer uses an electronic check, deposit the money when the order is captured (when the customer presses the Buy button).
The Payment Rules subcomponent does not replace WebSphere Commerce Payments (a payment server system available in WebSphere Commerce). The Payment Rules subcomponent represents an additional software layer that provides payment-processing logic at a business level to convert business rules into payment actions.
The Payment Rules subcomponent interacts with WebSphere Commerce Payments and WebSphere Commerce Payments interacts with external payment systems through Payment Cassettes or Payment Plug-in. The Payment Plug-ins are alternatives to Payment Cassettes and are suggested to use to connect to external payment systems. The new implementation of WebSphere Commerce Payments can communicate with WebSphere Commerce Payments cassettes through a special payment plug-in called the WC Payments Cassette plug-in
The WebSphere Commerce Payments plug-in is a type of bridge plug-in that enables existing users of WebSphere Commerce Payments to use WebSphere Commerce Payments cassettes for payment processing. This bridge can be used as a temporary measure until you are ready to move entirely to an environment that does not use payment cassettes.
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