“THE FACT THAT OUR CUSTOMERS CAN MAKE PAYMENTS AT ANY TIME OF DAY OR NIGHT, FROM ANY LOCATION HAS BEEN OF A HUGE BENEFIT, BOTH TO THEM AND TO US”
Karen Hercus, Finance Systems Manager, University of AberdeenTACKLING THE ISSUES
The RCP system was developed tackle the impact of the issues institutions traditionally face with recurring card payments:
ADMINISTRATION
Traditionally there are a number of manual tasks which equate to a significant administration overhead for example the collection and entry of payment details, ongoing amendment of payment details and amounts, the manual processing of payments, including trying cards more than once and dealing with expired cards and the creation of any ensuing correspondence.
WPM Education overcomes these issues by providing a facility for users to enter their payment details directly via the web and authorises them in real-time. It also manages the payment collection process and can automate the generation of correspondence.
THIRD PARTY COSTS
At peak times in the student calendar there is often a requirement for additional card processing terminals, temporary staff and potentially the cost of specific software to process recurring card payments.
WPM Education requires no additional hardware, software as transactions can be processed through the same merchant account as 'real-time' card payments.
RECURRING CARD PAYMENTS (RCP)
WPM Education Recurring Card Payment system has been specifically developed to provide a solution for institutions requiring the ability to securely store and process credit and debit cards.
The system features a secure web-based administration tool to allow administrators to create and amend payment instructions, generate correspondence and view reports.
Typically a web front-end is also implemented to allow payers to set up payment instructions without requiring any intervention from staff. The web front-end can either be provided in a stand-alone form or integrated with the Card Payment Gateway to also allow real-time card payments. Payers can set up plans based on pre-defined plan templates which can use both pre-defined dates and payment splitting or using dynamic logic. For example; allowing a parent to set up a payment instruction for their son or daughter's accommodation fees which will be collected via three payments on 1st November, 1st February and 1st April respectively with the full amount being split evenly between the three instalments.
The system can be used to process different payment types, including fixed instalments such as tuition or accommodation fees, as well as recurring payments such as subscriptions (e.g. for a sports centre or magazine) or donations. This is in addition to setting up and processing one-off and ad hoc payments on a card which does not necessarily have to be related to a specific debt.
The system can also cater for the automated update of payment plan instalment amounts dependent on the user's current debt. This means that it can respond to changes in, for example, tuition and accommodation fee balances in cases where a partial payment is made by alternative methods, a tuition fee being reassessed or a student moves accommodation to a different rate band.
The Visa Account Updater (VAU) and Stop Service and the MasterCard Automatic Billing Updater Service should be used for recurring payments as this reduces potential additional charges levied in connection with Customer Not Present (CNP) transactions. WPM Education supports this functionality, but implementation is dependent on the acquirer supporting the solution and, at present, the rollout of this is still very patchy.
KEEPING YOUR DATA SECURE
As more and more stories of leaked and lost customer data hit the headlines and hightened importance being placed on the PCI Data Security Standard it is now more of an issue than ever for institutions to hold hard copy and electronic card details in a secure manner.
WPM Education managed solutions store card details in an encrypted form removing risk from the institution and conforms to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
Please click here to find out more about the PCI DSS.
Note: Recurring payments are sometimes also referred to as continuous authority payments, recurring billing or similar terms. In essence they are refer to the same principle of taking one or more payments at a future date from a payer's card once they have provided you with the authority to do so.
In general it is advisable to process continuous authority / recurring billing transactions using a different merchant account to allow your payment service provider and acquirer to easily identify these as being different from normal e-commerce card transactions.