Creating and Configuring Merchant Accounts

An organization can configure Aptify to communicate with multiple merchant accounts, depending on the specific payment types the organization supports. For example, the organization can use one merchant account for processing MasterCard credit card payments and a second account for processing automated clearing house (ACH) payments.

By default, Aptify provides integration support for PayPal PayFlow Pro. (The PayFlow Pro service was formerly offered by VeriSign but is now offered by PayPal.)

If the organization identifies a need to integrate with other merchant accounts to process a particular type of electronic payment, a developer can write an object that defines the communication between Aptify and the new merchant account to authorize and capture electronic transactions. The object should be based on Aptify's ElectronicPaymentBase class. See the Aptify Software Development Kit (SDK) for details. Once compiled, the object should be added to the Aptify Object Repository.

Once the object has been added to Aptify, follow the steps below to create the new Merchant Accounts record.

The following steps describe how to add a Merchant Account to Aptify:

1. Open a new record from the Merchant Accounts service.
   • This service is located in the Order Entry Administration application by default.
      
2. Enter a name for the merchant account.
3. Specify the organization with which the account is associated. This field links to the Organizations service.
4. Specify the employee who is responsible for this account relationship in the Manager field. This field links to the Employee service.
5. Select the Authorization Type:
   • AuthOnly: Select this option if a payment is authorized at the time the payment is initially saved but is then captured in a later operation after its corresponding order has shipped. This is the typical setting for most merchant accounts.
   • AuthCapture: Select this option if a payment is authorized and captured at the time the payment is initially saved.
   • OrderSpecific: This option is reserved for future use.
      
6. If your organization has enrolled in a Fraud Check program with the processing merchant, specify a Fraud Check Level of Low, Medium, or High.
   • Fraud checking functionality is enabled as long as this field is set to something other than Off.
   • The fraud checking feature enables an organization to perform real-time authorization and fraud evaluation while helping to distinguish between legitimate shoppers and fraudulent users in a single transaction request. Note that an organization typically must subscribe to the merchant account's Fraud Prevention services to successfully utilize this feature.
      

7. If you enable Fraud Check, you must also specify one or more Fraud Mappings to pass the necessary data to the merchant account. This step is described later in these instructions.
   
   

   The Fraud Check Threshold field is not currently used but exists for backwards compatibility purposes.

8. If the organization's merchant account is configured to verify the customer's address during the authorization process, select the Do AVS Check? option.
9. If you selected the Do AVS Check? option, specify the AVS Threshold to determine under what circumstances a payment's authorization should fail if one or more address characteristics do not match the address on file with the customer's issuer.
   • This field specifies the threshold for when a payment should be failed based on the results of an address verification match. When a merchant processes a payment request, it may attempt to verify the address provided by the customer against the address on file for the provided account (such as a credit card account). The merchant system then returns this information to Aptify.
   • Aptify converts the AVS check information in a numeric score, from 0 to 10. If the AVS score is equal to or less than the AVS threshold, then the payment fails.
   • The AVS Threshold supports a scale from 1 to 9. The higher the threshold, then the less tolerant the merchant account on AVS results.
   • PayPal's AVS results are based on an Address and ZIP Code match. When Aptify received AVS information from PayPal, it assigns a score from 1 to 10 based on the following criteria:
   • If the AVS service is unavailable, the assigned score is 3.
   • If both the Address and ZIP Code match, the assigned score is 10.
   • If the ZIP Code matches but the Address does not, the assigned score is 7.
   • If the Address matches but the ZIP Code does not, the assigned score is 5.

   • If neither the address nor ZIP Code match, the assigned score is 0.
     
     

     Note Concerning PayPal Fraud Protection

     In order to handle address verification during the authorization process, an administrator must set up fraud protection within PayPal. This will allow Aptify to pass in the shipping address and zip code, and PayPal will determine if the billing address matches the information. If this is not setup, Aptify will still pass in the values; however, Aptify can only react to the information given by PayPal after the transaction is accepted (i.e., void the transaction since it does not pass fraud check). See the Paypal Manager website for more information about configuring fraud protection with PayPal. 

     
     
     

10. Select the Is Active? option to enable this merchant account.
11. Select the Use Aptify Reference Number? option if you want to use Aptify's reference number in all transactions subsequent to the initial authorization.
    • During the initial authorization operation, Aptify assigns a reference number using the payment ID and the number 1 (for example, Payment ID 27 would have a reference number of 27-1).
    • See Obtaining an Authorization  to see an example of the Reference Number column.
    • If this option is selected, Aptify continues to use this reference number in the other transactions related to this payment (such as when capturing the payment).
    • If this option is cleared, Aptify uses the Processor's reference number (assigned during the initial authorization transaction) as the payment's reference number in all subsequent transactions.
    • Refer to Using the ePayment Capture Wizard to see the Reference Number column in an example of a situation where the Use Aptify Reference Number? option was not selected. In this case, the Reference Number in the capture transaction uses the Processor Reference Number from the Authorization transaction.
       
12. Select the Do CVV Check? option if the merchant account verifies a credit card's security number during authorization.
    • When this option is selected, Aptify send the credit card security number provided by the customer to the merchant for verification.
    • This security number is the three- or four-digit number that appears on credit cards in addition to the account number. It is also known as the Card Verification Value code (CVV) or as the Card Security Code (CSC).
    • Depending on your organization's business rules, a customer or order entry clerk may need to enter the security number as part of the credit card authorization process.
       
13. Select the Use Additional Parameters option if you want to pass additional parameters (in addition to or other than Fraud Checking) to your organization's merchant account.

    • If you select this option, you must also specify one or more Additional Parameters to pass the necessary data to the merchant account. This step is described later in these instructions.

      Note Concerning Order Comments and HTML Fields

      If the Use Additional Parameters option is enabled, Aptify will automatically send comments from Orders (the value found on the Order's Comments tab) to the merchant account. No additional steps are necessary. However, note that HTML fields (like an order's Comments field) are not fully supported when passing data to the merchant account. Therefore, only the body of the HTML is posted to the merchant account. 

      
      
      

14. Select the Use Reference Transaction option if your organization processes reference transaction-based credit card payments.
    • See About the Credit Card Reference Transaction Payment Type for more information on using this type of payment.
      
      
15. Click the PlugIns tab and specify the assembly name, repository location, and class of the object written by a developer to allow Aptify to communicate with the merchant account.
    • See PlugIns Tab for more information on these fields.
    • The figure below displays the PlugIns tab for the PayPal merchant account, support for which is included in the standard Aptify installation. If you are adding Merchant Account support for PayPal PayFlow Pro, specify the information shown below on the Merchant Account's PlugIns tab.
      
      
16. Click the Attributes tab and create sub-type records to specify the set of values required to establish a connection and communicate with the merchant account.
    • See About the Merchant Account Additional Parameters Form for a list of standard attributes that you may need to specify for Aptify to successfully connect to a merchant account.
    • If enabling support for PayPal, be sure to specify the following attributes:
      • GatewayLocation: The server location provided by PayPal.
      • GatewayPort: The TCP/UDP port number on which Aptify will send traffic to PayPal. Typically, this is port 443 for secure HTTPS Internet traffic.
      • PartnerID: The PartnerID provided by PayPal when the organization created a PayFlow Pro account. This identifies the authorized PayPal agent responsible for your account.
      • MerchantID: The organization's ID assigned by PayPal.
      • Username: The organization's user name to access its PayPal account.
      • Password: The password for the specified user name, which is required to connect to the PayPal account.
      • Timeout: Specify the timeout interval (in seconds) for a transaction with PayPal. The recommended timeout period is 30 seconds.
      • Proxy Server Attributes: If your organization uses a proxy server, add the proxy server attributes as needed to allow Aptify to communicate with PayPal through the proxy server. See About the Merchant Account Additional Parameters Form for information on these attributes.
        
        
17. If you specified a Fraud Check Level and Fraud Check Threshold, click the Fraud Mappings tab and add one or more records to pass data to the merchant account.
    • See About the Merchant Account Fraud Mappings Form for more information.
       
18. If you enabled the Use Additional Parameters option, click the Additional Parameters tab and add one or more records to pass data (in addition to or other than Fraud Checking) to the merchant account.
    • See About the Merchant Account Additional Parameters Form for more information.
       
19. Click the Payment Types tab and specify the set of electronic payment methods that this merchant account will process.
    • See About the Payment Types Form for Merchant Accounts for more information.
    • If using reference transactions, you must create one or more Payment Types using the Credit Card Reference Transaction base type. See Managing Payment Types for more information on creating new payment types.
       
20. Click the Currency Types tab and specify the set of currencies that this merchant account will process.

    • See About the Currency Types Form for Merchant Accounts for more information.

      An active merchant account will only process payments that use a Payment Type specified on the Payment Types tab and that are in a currency specified on the Currency Types tab.

21. Save and close the Merchant Accounts record.
22. Prepare the desktop computers to communicate with the merchant account.
    • The specific steps will vary depending on the integration requirements of the merchant account. No specific steps are required if using the PayPal integration included with Aptify 5.5.
    • Here are the steps if you use PayPal. Note that if you previously rebooted a computer after running the Aptify desktop application for the first time, you do not need to follow these instructions (the required Windows registry updates have already been made to the computer). If a computer has not previously been rebooted after running Aptify for the first time, follow these steps:
      1. Close and reopen Aptify to ensure that the latest objects have been downloaded from the Object Repository.
      2. Close Aptify.
      3. Restart the computer.
          
23. Restart all computers that run the Aptify Windows Desktop client, if necessary (depending on the integration requirements for the merchant account vendor).