Main Balances

A main balance is an actual currency balance in a subscription or group wallet.

An actual currency balance represents real money and not a pseudo-currency balance (such as vouchers). For more information about actual currency balances and pseudo-currency balances, see the discussion about balances in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

The following restrictions apply to a balance template configured as a main balance:
  • Only simple currency balances can be used (not periodic or on-demand balances).
  • A subscription or group wallet can contain zero or one prepaid main balance and zero or one postpaid main balance.
    Note: The postpaid main balance can be of the same class as the prepaid main balance. The post-paid main balance must be configured with a billing cycle.
  • The balance instance creation policy must be one instance per wallet.
  • A main balance cannot be a device-specific balance.

For more information about main balances, including device-specific balances, prepaid and postpaid main balances, main balances and taxes, and payments and recharges, see the discussion about balances in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

Main Balances and Pay Now

Pay Now can be used for immediate payment for catalog item purchases, payments, recharges, and subscription or group refunds.

The credit limit on a main balance does not impact charges when Pay Now is applied. However, credit limits on balances other than the main balance still apply. In addition, charge meters on a main balance are impacted when a Pay Now charge is made.

Charges can be split between a main balance (Pay Now) and other balances. This can occur when a non-main balance has a higher consumption priority, but does not have enough currency available for the entire charge. In this situation, Pay Now is used to pay for the remainder of the charge. For example, an offer purchase charge is $50. A non-main balance has 20 bonus dollars. The Charging Server charges $20 to the bonus dollar balance and generates a Pay Now payment authorization request for the remaining $30.

Note: If the purchase charge for a one-time offer was paid using Pay Now, the refund processes using Pay Now when canceling the one-time offer. A payment refund request is submitted using the payment record of the purchase. You can optionally specify not to use Pay Now to process the refund in the CancelOffer API call by calling the CancelOffer API in advice mode.

When the MtxBalanceUpdate in the MtxPurchaseEvent indicates that the balance update to a main balance was the result of a Pay Now operation, the ChargeList includes an MtxEventCharge that indicates the charge to the balance, such as a charge of 34.0 (UpdateType = 1), and an MtxEventCharge that indicates the Pay Now impact to the balance, such as a payment of -34.0 (UpdateType = 13). Note that the net charge and the net impact to the balance after a Pay Now payment is zero (0).

The following update types apply to prepaid main balances:
  • recharge (UpdateType = 17)
  • refund (UpdateType = 18)

For more information about Pay Now, see MATRIXX Pay Now. For more information about main balances, see the discussion about main balances in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating. For an example of an MtxPaymentEvent EDR, see the discussion about general ledger event contents in MATRIXX Integration.