Certain enables online payment processing to handle online payment transactions.

Currently, Certain supports the following online payment gateways:

• Authorize.Net
• Chase Orbital
• CyberSource
• PayPal
• Pay.gov
• Shift4
• Stripe - Charges (legacy)
• Stripe - Payment Intents

The e-commerce account will be available to all events and registration forms within the Certain account that is selected in the account "owner" list.

Configuring E-commerce and Financial Handling in Certain

E-commerce accounts are configured on the Account Settings > Registration > Financial > E-commerce Account Details page in Certain, and are therefore available to multiple events within the same account. E-Commerce must be active for both the account and (then) for individual events.

To use e-commerce accounts within an event, you must:

• Enable the Financial module in Account Settings > Implementation > Products > Finance Module > E-commerce

• Select an E-commerce account for the event in Event Setup > Payments

• Assign an E-commerce account to the registration form you would like to use to accept payments in Forms > Payment.
  Note: Choose “process payments online for this form” if you want to send the funds to the merchant bank.

• Include the Financial section in the form page layout in Forms > Create.

A Short Introduction to E-commerce

PayPal publishes an excellent guide that describes how online credit card processing works.

 

The basic process requires 3 components:

1. A merchant bank account

2. A processor or third-party processor

3. An account with a supported payment gateway (PayPal, Ogone, QuikPay, Pay.gov, CyberSource, Authorize.Net, Official Payments, WorldPay, Realex Payments or SecurePay),

Certain then connects to your payment gateway account via a Certain e-commerce account connection. The most important terms are defined below.

Internet Merchant Bank Account

This special type of account is required for merchants who wish to sell goods and services over the Internet and accept credit cards as payment. This type of account is different than a typical merchant account and is considered card-not-present, like mail-order / phone-order (MO/TO) merchant accounts.

Merchant accounts are different from checking or savings accounts because they enable you to process credit card charges into them. Because you can issue refunds from this account into people's credit card accounts (and because you are responsible for issuing chargebacks even if you already spent that money), the merchant account application process includes a credit check that is more rigorous then that for checking/savings accounts. Banks are effectively issuing you a credit line when you get a merchant account.

There are thousands of banks that will issue merchant accounts. Examples include Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase, etc.

For more information, visit: PayPal.com.

Processor

A large data center that processes credit card transactions and settles funds to merchants. A processor connects to the merchant on behalf of an acquirer via a gateway (such as PayPal) or POS system to process payments electronically. Processors edit and format messages and switch to bank card networks. They provide files for clearing and settlement and other value-added services.

The Processor may be the acquirer bank, or it may be a third-party processor. There are only a small number of payment processors, which all banks use. These include EDS Aurora, FDMS (Nashville), Global Payments (Central, East), Nova, Paymentech, Vital (Visanet), etc.

Other Related Terms

• Acquirer – A bank or financial institution that issues merchant accounts for the acceptance of credit card transactions.

• Acquiring Bank – The bank that maintains the merchant relationship and receives all transactions from the merchant.

• Third Party Processor – A non-member agent, employed by an acquiring bank, which provides authorization, settlement and merchant services to the bank's merchant.

Deciding How to Verify Online Transactions

Check the Billing Address box if you want to collect a separate billing address. This can be used with credit card transactions to perform AVS validation. Address Verification Service (AVS) is offered by many credit card-issuing institutions, and it enables the merchant to compare the street number and/or zip code provided by a cardholder to those on record with the card issuer. AVS returns one of three responses: Y = the values match, N = the values do not match, X = the credit card issuer does not support AVS.

You, as the merchant, must decide what level of AVS validation to accept with credit card purchases. Check Match Zip in order to compare the zip code provided in the billing address to that on file with the bank. Check Match Street in order to compare the street number in the billing address to that on file with the bank. (Note that 123 Main St. and 123 Howard Ave. will return the same result.) Check Require AVS if you do not want to accept credit cards from banks that do not provide AVS validation (i.e., those that return "X" after the comparison is made.)

When AVS is performed (by checking any of the 3 options described in the paragraph above), the bank merely returns advice regarding the match between the billing address provided by the cardholder and that on record with the bank. It does not reject transactions based on these values, rather, it is up to the merchant to decide whether to accept or reject the card based on the AVS results. If the merchant decides to reject the transaction, then Certain automatically voids the previous transaction, so that funds are not withdrawn from the cardholder's account. The credit card issuer, however, does not release the "hold on funds" from the credit card until the authorization reaches its time out limit, which can last several days or weeks.

Because event registration fees are usually big-ticket items ($100s and up), if a cardholder failed AVS validation several times, their credit limit would quickly be consumed and they would be unable to make further purchases on the card until they call their issuing bank and obtain a release. Certain uses a method of AVS that overcomes this potentially annoying and time-consuming problem by first performing an Authorization request for $0.01, in order to receive the AVS results based on the provided billing address. This Authorization is then immediately voided so that the charge does not appear on the cardholder's account. If the AVS results meet the standard set for the processing account, then the full amount of the Sale is charged against the credit card. If the transaction is rejected based on the AVS results, then the cardholder receives an error message (error code 112) describing the problem.

The two tables below represent the decision tree that Certain uses to accept or reject credit cards based on AVS results:

Scenario 1. Require AVS Off (not checked)

• Match Zip checked: Accept ZIP=Y or ZIP=X, Reject ZIP=N (Ignore STREET)

• Match Street checked: Accept STREET=Y or STREET=X, Reject STREET=N (Ignore Zip)

• Both Match Zip and Match Street checked:

 

	STREET=Y	STREET=N	STREET=X
ZIP=Y	Accept	Reject	Accept
ZIP=N	Reject	Reject	Reject
ZIP=X	Accept	Reject	Accept

 

Scenario 2. Require AVS On (checked)

• Match Zip checked: Accept ZIP=Y, Reject ZIP=N or ZIP=X (Ignore STREET)

• Match Street checked: Accept STREET=Y, Reject STREET=N or STREET=X (Ignore ZIP)

• Both Match Zip and Match Street checked:

 

	STREET=Y	STREET=N	STREET=X
ZIP=Y	Accept	Reject	Reject
ZIP=N	Reject	Reject	Reject
ZIP=X	Reject	Reject	Reject

 

If you want to use AVS, but do not have specific expertise or external requirements regarding it, then we recommend the following settings (see scenario 1.i above):

• "Billing Address" = checked

• "Match Zip" = checked

• "Match Street" = not checked

• "Require AVS" = not checked

PayPal Manager

If you are using PayPal as your payment gateway, you can click the PayPal manager link to access the detailed transaction information for your account. PayPal stores information not available in Certain, such as the card issuing bank's authorization number and voice authorization information. It is useful for reconciling bank statements and tracking down discrepancies. You should also periodically (quarterly or annually at least) change the password to your PayPal account, and then update that password on the Certain platform.

If you perform AVS on the transactions processed in your account (see description above), then each individual sale processed by Certain will record 3 transactions in PayPal: an Auth for $0.01, a Void of the $0.01 Auth, and a Sale for the full amount. In order to only see the actual Sale transactions, use the PayPal custom report generator to create reports that do not display these Auth and Void transactions.

Certain passes the event code and reg code with each transaction processed through PayPal. The event code is passed in the "Comment1" field, and the reg code is passed in the "Comment2" field. Include these fields in your custom reports created in PayPal Manager in order to easily track payments and refunds to their original registration, or to group payments by the event code.

 

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