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Define and set up payment methods

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Define and set up payment methods

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Payment methods are the ways in which customers pay for their subscription services. A customer can choose a payment method based on your company’s list of preferred payment methods. To set up payment methods for the customer accounts, define the payment methods your company can support in Payments settings, and then set up the payment methods for the customer accounts.

Payment methods replicated from the production environment can not be used for testing with gateway in the sandbox environment because they are scrubbed when refreshing the environments. You must close and delete the payment method and create a new payment method for testing.

Activate payment methods

Navigate to Payment Settings > Payment Method to define and activate payment methods your company supports.

The payment methods you select will appear in a picklist when you set up the billing and payment terms for a customer within the customer account. 

Note that you can create payment methods using the API operations even if the payment method type is not selected on the Customize Payment Methods page.

For more details about the supported payment methods, see Supported Payment Methods.

Set up payment methods for customer accounts

You can set up payment methods for new customer accounts during the account creation process, or by editing an existing account. You can add a maximum of 100 payment methods to an account. You can enable the Auto-Pay setting on a customer account that uses an electronic payment method to automatically collect payments.

For payment method creation instructions on integrations that are requested through the Specialized Payment Connections service, see the article for the specific payment gateway integration.

Before you start

Make sure that you have read the following information:

  • The Credit Card option in any of the following approaches can also be used to create Debit Card payment methods.
  • The following approaches vary depending on the payment method type and payment gateway integration. Some approaches might be supported only for specific integrations, while others are more broadly applicable. For detailed information, see the article for each individual payment gateway integration.

Set up a payment method through the Zuora UI

  1. Navigate to the UI section for setting up payment methods:
    • To set up a payment method during the creation of a new customer account, navigate to the Payment Method section.
    • To set up a new electronic payment method for an existing customer account, open the customer account page, navigate to the Electronic Payment Methods section, and then click Create New Payment Method.
  2. Select one of the available electronic payment methods you have defined in the Payment Method setting. During the creation of a new customer account, you can set up an external payment method for the customer account.
  3. Enter the payment method details.
  4. Click Save.

Set up a payment method through the API

You can use any of the following REST APIs to set up a payment method:

For more information about the tokenization of payment methods, see Create tokenized payment methods with existing tokens or account information.

To set up Apple Pay and Google Pay through REST API, see the following articles:

Set up a payment method through Payment Form

You can implement hosted payment forms to set up payment methods through the Payment Form solution, featuring simplified integration, real-time configuration, and flexible customization. See Payment Form for details.

Set up a payment method through Payment Pages 2.0

You can use the embedded iFrame or Direct POST to implement Payment Pages 2.0 to collect your end user's payment method data. See Payment Pages 2.0 for details.

Set up a payment method through JavaScript SDK integration

This approach is available on limited payment gateway integrations and payment method types. For more information, see the following articles:

Define the default payment method of a customer account

If there are multiple payment methods associated with a customer account, you can define a default payment method to indicate that it is the customer's preferred method. The approach of defining the default payment method depends on whether the Cascading Payment Method feature is enabled.

Cascading Payment Method Procedure
Disabled
  1. On the customer account page, navigate to the Billing and Payment info section.
  2. Click Edit.
  3. From the Default Payment Method list, select a payment method.
  4. Click Save.
Enabled

If the Cascading Payment Method feature is enabled and the Cascading Consent Received setting is toggled on, define the default payment method in the payment method priority list. The first payment method in the priority list will be the default payment method of the customer account.

  1. On the customer account page, navigate to the Electronic Payment Methods section.
  2. Click Payment Method Priorities. The Priority List dialog is displayed.
  3. If the payment method to be used as the default payment method is already in the Include in cascading list, drag and drop the payment method to the top.
  4. If the payment method to be used as the default payment method is in the Exclude in cascading list, drag and drop the payment method from the Exclude in cascading list to the top of the Include in cascading list. 

You can also use the Configure cascading payment methods for an account API operation to update the priority order of the payment method to define the default payment method.

 

Best practices

Link to a customer account

Although Zuora supports creating orphan payment methods that are not associated with customer accounts, it is recommended that you link the payment method with an account when creating the payment method:

  • For payment methods created through API operations, specify the accountKey or accountID field.
  • For payment methods created through hosted payment method pages, specify the field_accountId client parameter in the request.

Pass in city and country information

It is recommended to provide the city and country information when creating a payment method. The information will be sent to the gateway and be used to process payments with this payment method. If the information is not provided during payment method creation, the city and country data will be missing during payment processing. The bill-to or sold-to address information of your account will not be included in the request to the gateway.

Manage stored credential profiles for credit cards

A stored credential profile within a payment method is a container for data of a credential that has been stored in accordance with a customer consent agreement. Each stored credential profile includes a transaction identifier, which Zuora sends to the payment gateway whenever the payment method is used in a payment.

When you create a Credit Card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay payment method through the Zuora UI, API operations, or Payment Pages 2.0, Zuora automatically creates a stored credential profile within the payment method. See Stored credential transactions for more information.

Retrieve token information of payment methods

If a payment method is associated with any tokens, the following information about the token is available in the Electronic Payment Methods section on the customer account page:

  • Token Type
    • Gateway: The token is generated and used by a specific payment gateway.
    • Network: The token is generated by the card networks and can be used across gateways if provisioned in the 'On Behalf Of' model.
  • Payment Gateway: The payment gateway that generated the token.
  • Up to three token IDs that are associated with this payment method on a specific gateway.