An Overview of Payment Processing Scenarios

The Payment Options module allows you to define how customers will be able to pay for an order. You can offer one or more payment options. ProductCart allows you to define a variety of real time and non-real time payment methods. In addition, you can restrict certain payment methods to wholesale customers only.

Make sere you add at least one payment option to your store before you start testing the checkout process, or you will not be able to checkout (ProductCart will show an error message Indicating that at least one payment option must be configured).

There are three types of possible payment processing scenarios in ProductCart, which correspond to the following payment methods:

• Real time payment methods, configured to capture funds. This is how real time payment gateways are typically setup by default. When a payment gateway is configured this way, a credit card transaction is at the same time authorized (i.e. the payment gateway checks to see if the funds necessary for the order are available on that credit card account, and reserves them for the transaction), and captured (i.e. the payment gateway actually debits the account). As explained in more details later in this chapter, ProductCart considers these orders “processed”, as payment has already been collected when the order is finalized. All payment getaways can authorize and capture funds.

• Real time payment methods, configured to only authorize funds. Some, but not all payment gateways support this feature. Each payment gateway supported by ProductCart is described in details later in this chapter. When a payment gateway is configured to only authorize, rather than capture funds, the customer’s account is not debited (although the funds are reserved for a certain amount of time and may not be accessible for other purchases during that time). In this scenario, payment has not yet been collected for thorder, and therefore ProductCart considers it “pending”.
• Non-real time payment methods. Funds are neither authorized, nor captured during the checkout process. (e.g. check, purchase order, COD, etc.). Any non-real time payment option leads to transactions that are processed at a later time. All orders placed using a non-real time payment option are considered “pending” by ProductCart.