Tutorials > Payments > WebSphere Commerce Payments


Step 5: Creating an account

So far, you have defined one merchant, the Test Store, and enabled one payment cassette, the OfflineCard Cassette. Your first task as the Merchant Administrator is to establish an account for the OfflineCard Cassette.

An account is a relationship between the merchant and the financial institution which processes transactions for that merchant. There can be multiple accounts for each payment cassette. For this tutorial, we will create one account for the OfflineCard Cassette.

To create an account:

  1. From the navigation frame click Merchant Settings.

  2. From the Merchant Settings page, click the OfflineCard Cassette icon for the Test Store.

  3. From the OfflineCard Cassette page, click Accounts.

  4. On the Accounts page, click Add an Account.

  5. Complete the following fields (note that the text in monospace must be entered for the tutorial):

    Add an account fields
    Field name Description
    Account name Type Test Account. This is the name that you assign to the account. Its only function is to display in the user interface.
    Account number Type 111111111. This is a number that either the hosting service provider or the Merchant Administrator, assigns to uniquely identify the account in all transaction data.
    Financial Institution name Type Test Bank. This is the name of the financial institution with which you hold this account. Its only function is to provide display information in the user interface.
    Currency Select the currency to be collected by this account.
    Batch close time The number of minutes past midnight that the cassette automatically closes batches for this account. A value of 0 (zero) represents midnight. 1439 is the maximum value allowed. A null value disables automatic batch closing.

  6. Click Create account to create the account for the OfflineCard Cassette.


Specify account settings

To use the tutorial, it is not necessary to specify any particular basic or advanced settings for the account and brand you just created for a cassette. You should be aware, however, that you can specify certain options for the account. For example, as Merchant administrator, you can define whether the account should have an expiration period associated with payment approvals.

To view account settings from the WebSphere Commerce Payments user interface for the OfflineCard Cassette, do the following:

  1. Select Merchant Settings on the navigation frame.

  2. From the Merchant Settings window, click the OfflineCard Cassette icon in the Test Store window.

  3. From the OfflineCard Cassette window, click Accounts.

  4. Select Test Account on the Accounts window.

  5. From the Test Account window, select Account Settings.

  6. You can view or change basic or advanced settings by clicking on the appropriate selection. For example, select Advanced settings to see the Approval Expiration setting for the Automated Payment Processing Option.

  7. Enter options as appropriate and select Update to update the account settings. (To cancel, select the Back arrow on the Account Settings window.)

You can refer to the online help for more information about settings for the processing options. For now, however, we will explore one of them--the Approval Expiration option.

You may want to set an approval expiration to control the length of time a payment approval is valid. It may be useful to set an approval expiration period to avoid charges imposed by the financial institution for depositing funds after an approval expires. For example, for credit card orders, payment approval lasts for only a certain number of days as established by the credit card issuer. If you try to deposit funds for an order payment after the approval has expired, the financial institution may either reject the funds deposit or charge you more to make the deposit. By setting an approval expiration period in WebSphere Commerce Payments you can avoid this situation because WebSphere Commerce Payments will prevent the capturing of funds for which an approval authorization has expired.

If a payment approval has expired and you try to deposit funds we will receive a message indicating the payment is not in the approve state. In the WebSphere Commerce Payments user interface, you can void the payment with an amount of 0. Once the payment is voided, you can perform an Approve operation to place the payment back into the approve state.

To use the approval expiration option, the cassette you use must support approval expiration. The OfflineCard, CustomOffline, VisaNet, and Paymentech cassettes provided with WebSphere Commerce Payments support approval expiration.

Important: The value you enter as the approval expiration period applies to all brands associated with an account. If the brands each have different payment approval expiration rules, set the approval expiration value for the lowest common denominator, or create a separate account for each brand. If you create a separate account for each brand, settle batch payments separately for each account.


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