Myntpay || Myntpay Gateway User's Manual

Recurring Billing Terminology

Posted by admin at 04 Feb, 2017

Adjustment Reason

Adjustment reason is used as a reason for the deactivation of a payment plan. There are three types of adjustment reasons:
— Cancellation - deactivation of the payment plan requested by the customer.
— Freeze - suspension of the payment plan for a certain period of time.
— Termination - deactivation of the payment plan initiated by the merchant.

Billing

Billing unifies billing cycle and billing profile assigning them to a specific payment.

Asset Transaction

Transaction that decreases a customer’s debt. The records related to asset transactions include information about physical payments, customer funds and all respective changes. Asset transaction is represented by two objects - Payment and Refund.

Payment

Transaction of funds that are transferred from customer to the merchant to cover debts represented by invoices.

Refund

Transaction that is an actual return of the money to the customer in case of revenue transactions error. Refund covers debts represented by credit.

Revenue Transaction

Transaction that increases a customer’s debt. The records related to revenue transactions include information about customer's debts and all respective changes. Revenue transaction is represented by three objects - Invoice, Credit and Fee.

Credit

Transaction that represents discounts or some specific charges applied to the customer.

Fee

Transaction surcharged to the account automatically by the system when a specific condition occurs or is met. The fee can be charged to a customer only if this condition is explicitly stated in the agreement between the customer and merchant. In order for the fee to be applied correctly, a policy indicating the principal for fee withholding has to be configured. A user can choose either of the following options for policy configuration:
— Always - used to set fee withholding as a fixed amount on a regular basis (does not depend on the invoice amount).
— When below - used to set the correlation between a fee amount and invoice amount (does depend on the invoice amount). For example, if the invoice amount is less than $30(set as a threshold), then the fee amount is $4, otherwise, the fee amount is $7 (set as a high ticket).

The following fees are available within the system:
— Enrollment fee – is charged when a customer record is created. The fee is charged one-time only.
— Soft decline fee – is charged on soft declines (transactions that were declined with the reason that suggests that further reattempt might be successful).
— Hard decline fee – is charged on hard declines (transactions that were declined with the reason that suggests that further reattempts are futile).
— Retry fee – is charged when previously declined transaction gets approved as a part of automated retry process.
— Chargeback fee – is charged when a chargeback is received.
— Statement fee – is charged for cases when a payment plan is paid by a customer who comes to facility and makes a payment in person.
— Freeze recurring fee – is charged when a payment plan is set on freeze. The fee is charged on recurring basis, replacing the regular payment plan amount.
— Freeze flat fee – is charged when a payment plan is set on freeze. The fee is charged one-time only.
— Return fee – is charged when a return on direct debit payment is received. Once configured, it is applied immediately. It cannot be applied to old returns.
— Late fee – is charged if there is an outstanding balance by a period indicated as a late period. The late period is set to indicate a period in days when the fee is applied. For example, if the value of the late period is set as “20”, it means that if after 20 days the invoice remains unpaid, the fee is applied. Once activated, the fee is applied to all unpaid invoices a customer has.
— Document access fee – is charged for accessing documents within a membership portal (for example, electronic libraries documents).

Invoice

Transaction that represents customer’s debt for merchant’s services.

Billing Cycle

Billing cycle defines the frequency of billings and the day when a billing occurs. Based on a billing cycle, invoices are created.

In the gateway, there are two basic types of billing cycle:
— Monthly - billing occurs on monthly basis.
— Weekly - billing occurs on weekly basis.

To set a billing cycle different from the basic ones, recurrence API field is used. This field regulates how often billing should occur based on the selected basic type of billing cycle - monthly or weekly.

For example:
— to configure a biweekly billing cycle, the value of the recurrence field should be set as 2 and submitted along with the billingCycleCode field including the code of the original weekly cycle that a new billing cycle is attached to;
— to configure a quarterly billing cycle, the value of the recurrence field should be set as 3 and submitted along with the billingCycleCode field including the code of the original monthly cycle that a new billing cycle is attached to;
— to configure an annual billing cycle, the value of the recurrence field should be set as 12 and submitted along with the billingCycleCode field including the code of the original monthly cycle that a new billing cycle is attached to.

Billing Profile

Billing profile defines which invoices (of what age) should be included into the payment while creation. Based on billing profile, payments can be created with optional settings.

Collections Phases

To simplify debt management process, accounts can be grouped into phases, based on the age of debt. Phases are age buckets used to classify age of the outstanding debt. Each merchant can define age limits for each phase based on their specific business needs, but it is common to use four phases, 30-days-long each.

Customer Account

Represents a person or an organization within gateway Suite. Stores basic demographic/contact information, as well as various activity related information (such as current balance, letter flags, etc).

Freeze

Freeze is the suspension of a billing schedule one or more billing periods.

Payment Plan Types

Payment plan (also referred to as payment schedule) can be of different types:
— Fixed (term) payment plan – a certain payment amount is agreed upon, and the number of payments is limited (fixed) by the agreement/contract. For example, $10 per month for 12 months.
— Unlimited (pay-as-you-go)/Perpetual payment plan – payment is going to recur until the plan is explicitly canceled. On the user interface, a number of the scheduled payments always lists 12. Once a payment is done, a new one is added to the lists of upcoming payments. For example, $10 per month until canceled.
— Hybrid (rollover or open-ended) payment plan – initially consists of a fixed (defined) number of payments, however, after the initial fixed number of payments, the billing continues to recur (the plan becomes unlimited) until it is explicitly canceled. For example, 6 months for $20 and then $30 until canceled.

Payment plan can obtain the following statuses:
— Current - indicates that the payment plan is active.
— Deferred - indicates that no invoice will be generated in the upcoming billing associated with the payment plan.
— Freeze - indicates that the payment plan is terminated. After the predefined number of freeze charges are passed, the payment plan will be reactivated automatically.
— Cancelled - indicates that the payment plan is cancelled.
— Expired - indicates that all payments associated with a payment plan are made; available only for a fixed payment plan.
— Unbilled - indicates that no billing occurred since the payment plan has been created.
— Suspended (deprecated) - indicates that the payment plan is set on hold by the system.
— Paused - indicates that the payment plan is set on hold by the user. A paused payment plan can be unpaused manually only.

Scheduled Payment

Payment that must be performed in the future but is not included in the current payment plan of a customer. For example, it can be represented as unscheduled dues.

Skip Tracing

Skip Tracing (or Skip Trace) - is the process of obtaining the updated contact information about a person based on their existing contact information for further debt collection.