Pay Now Overview

MATRIXX Pay Now enables the Charging Server to request immediate payment for product offer and bundle purchases, postpaid balance payments, and recharges from a Payment Gateway Provider. Subscribers can make quick and secure purchases using payment methods such as credit and debit cards.

Note: Pay Now is not supported for first-use charges.

Pay Now is an alternative to traditional prepaid balances or postpaid balances in which subscription payment methods are defined when a subscription is created. When a product offer or bundle purchase is executed using Pay Now, a payment request is made to a Payment Gateway Provider and the purchase is made immediately using a registered payment method. After a payment authorization completes and before it expires, the Charging Server initiates a payment settlement.

Note: If there is a Pay Now subscription charge (purchase or recharge), then that subscription must pay for the charge; it cannot be paid by a parent group.

Pay Now supports the payment types supported by the individual Payment Gateway Provider. For more information about supported payment types, see the documentation provided by the Payment Gateway Provider.

The Payment Service sends basic metrics about the number of payment operations to the SNMP server. For more information, see MATRIXX Monitoring and Logging.

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.

Taxable Recharge

Some US states require sellers and suppliers of prepaid wireless services to collect emergency telephone users surcharge (ETUS), for example 911 and 988, and local charges, for example, sales tax, on each transaction involving prepaid wireless services. To manage ETUS and local charges, define a recharge application profile in My MATRIXX. When the Charging Server makes a Pay Now recharge or purchase offer request, the Charging Server determines if there is a purchased offer or a global offer with a recharge application profile. If found, the taxes specified in the profile are applied. If there are multiple purchased offers with a recharge application profile, the offer with the highest priority is used. The Pay Now transaction is the requested recharge amount plus taxes.

For more information, see the discussion about taxable recharge in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.