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Payment Profiles

Zuora

Payment Profiles

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Payment Profiles are now generally available. To manage and access features from the self-service interface, see Manage Features.

Payment Profiles enable payment flexibility for subscribers by allowing payment methods to be associated with specific subscriptions. Additionally, payment profiles enable subscriptions to indicate the gateway to be used for electronic payment processing. Payment Profiles segments payments by subscription rather than invoice.

While this allows more flexibility in associating different payment methods or gateways by subscription, it introduces a few constraints you should be aware of:

  • Only Usable with Payment Runs: You can only use Payment Profiles with the Payment Run functionality. They are not supported for ad-hoc payments or through direct Payment API operations.

  • No Support for Subscription Creation: You cannot populate Payment Profile attributes when creating a subscription. Subscriptions must already exist before you can add these attributes.

The following scenario could result in the invoice not being processed by the payment run:

  • Negative Items Are Ignored: When calculating the amount to charge, Payment Profiles only consider positive line items. The system ignores all negative line items, such as discounts, refunds, or negative tax adjustments. This can result in an overcharge because the negative charges, which are meant to reduce the balance, are skipped, causing the payment amount to be greater than the invoice balance.

  • Zero-Amount Subscriptions Are Excluded: If a subscription only contains items with a zero balance (e.g., fully discounted services), it will be skipped entirely during the payment run. No payment will be attempted, even if the overall invoice balance is non-zero.

  • Subscription-Level Overcharges Can Occur: The system does not redistribute a negative balance from one subscription to offset a positive balance on another. Instead, it will process the positive subscription in full and ignore the negative one, which can lead to an overcharge for the customer. You can use the billing feature, Credit Memo, to create a credit memo for negative subscription balances. See the Invoice/Credit Memo generation rule for more detailed information. 

Prerequisites

Configure Payment Profiles

The following section describes how to populate Payment Profiles fields through Zuora UI. You can also update fields through Zuora REST API. See Create or update payment profiles in bulk Zuora REST API for details.

Payment Profiles allow you to store payment information at a granular level, more than the Account level. This feature allows you to specify the payment attributes at the subscription level, which can be used to collect payments using electronic payment methods. This feature is applicable if a billing document has multiple subscriptions, and the payment collection should use different payment methods and gateways.

Once enabled, the payment method and payment gateway payment attributes will be visible in the Payment Operations section of the Subscription. To modify one or both attributes, click the pencil icon in the top right corner and select desired inputs from the drop-down menu. 

  • Payment Method - Should be an active payment method belonging to the invoice owner account, not the subscription owner. If that payment method is not available on the invoice owner account, the system ignores the subscription-level configuration and falls back to the account-level default.
  • Payment Gateway - Should be an active gateway configured within the tenant. Ensure the gateway supports the selected payment method.

If a specific Payment Method or Gateway is not indicated on the Subscription, payment operations will use the account default payment method and gateway for processing.

PaymentProcessingScreen_PaymentProfiles.png

Configure Payment Run using Payment Profiles

The following section describes how to create a payment run through Zuora UI. You can also create custom payment runs through Zuora REST API. See Create Custom Payment Runs through Zuora REST API for details.

Use the Use payment profile information field to enable payment profiles in a payment run. For more information, see Create a payment run.

The payment run is an asynchronous process running in the background, so you can continue using the Zuora application while the payment run is being executed. Payment runs that have payment profiles enabled may not pick items that have account-level autopay settings.

To create a payment run:

  1. Navigate to Payments > Payment Runs in the left navigation section.
  2. Click New Payment Run (also applicable for scheduled payment runs).
  3. Select whether you want to create a payment run for Multiple Customer Accounts or Single Customer Account.
    • If you select Multiple Customer Accounts, you can choose All Customer Accounts or filter by batch, bill cycle day, currency, payment gateway, or invoices in a bill run.
    • If you select Single Customer Account, search for the customer account.
  4. Select Use payment profile information.
    If you select this option, the payment run will attempt a payment based on the identified payment method and/or gateway identified on the subscription. 
  5. Optionally, select other payment processing rules. Enter a Target Date for the payment run. For more information, see Create Payment Run. 
  6. Click Create Payment Run.

PaymentProfiles_UsePaymentProfileInformation.png

How does a payment run work with Payment Profiles?

Once the payment run is executed using the Payment Profiles, the following tasks are completed:

  1. All invoices that meet the specified criteria are collected.
  2. Invoices are segmented by subscription. For each subscription, the payment run calculates the balance due by summing only positive invoice items. Any negative invoice item, such as discounts, refunds, or negative taxes, is not included in this calculation.
  3. Payments are processed for subscriptions individually using specified payment methods and gateways.

When calculating the subscription balance, Payment Profiles ignores negative invoice items, including negative tax line items. This may lead to an inflated balance and a higher-than-expected payment amount, especially if negative items are significant.

When processing payments with Payment Profiles, a payment run may reject a payment for a subscription if it encounters either of the following conditions:

  • The calculated subscription balance exceeds the total invoice balance, which can occur because negative invoice items are ignored.
  • The subscription contains only zero-amount items.

In such cases, the payment will be skipped for that invoice.

A list of all payments can be viewed within the Payment Run table. Each payment will provide details of the corresponding invoice and account, the payment method and gateway, the payment amount, and the status.

If Invoice Settlement is enabled on your tenant and you have selected to use unapplied payments and credit memos in payment runs, the order of processing payments is as below:

  1. Apply the unapplied payments
  2. Apply unapplied credit memos
  3. Process payments for the remaining balance
  4. Unapplied payment and credit memos will be applied to charges based on the configured application rules in your environment. For more information, see Default Application Rules.