Cycle Holding Balances

A product offer (or bundle) defined with its own recurring cycle (purchased item cycle) can have a cycle holding balance to be used for paying its recurring charges. Cycle holding balances apply to prepaid services and are applied only to product offers or bundles that have a purchased item cycle defined. A purchased item cycle is a cycle that enables recurring processing to succeed or fail on a per offer or bundle basis (rather than on a per balance cycle or per billing cycle basis).

If a product offer has recurring charges or grants that are triggered to be applied by a purchased item cycle, and if a cycle holding balance is defined for the cycle processing of that product offer, then on recurring processing, the Charging Application transfers and holds funds in the cycle holding balance for the sole use of paying recurring charges.

The cycle holding balance is specified by selecting a balance template to be used to create the holding balance instance. When the offer (or bundle) is purchased, the cycle holding balance (if specified) is created to pay for all the recurring charges from the offer (or bundle). An offer's cycle holding balance is used to pay for its own recurring charges only (it is not used to pay recurring charges of another offer).

The cycle holding balance is used for recurring charge only. It is not used for usage charge, or the initial recurring (prorated) charge at the time of offer purchase or resume. Only the G/L balances in the same wallet as the holding balance could be used to fund the cycle holding balance. It is not supported to use the aggregated balances in other wallets to fund the cycle holding balance.

When to Use Cycle Holding Balances

Digital Service Providers might want to use cycle holding balances for the following reasons:

  • To enable partial payment of recurring charges for specific product offers or bundles. On recurring processing, if a subscriber has insufficient credit for a recurring offer or offer bundle renewal, some partial payment can be taken.
  • To enable the payment of required account fees that must be paid before other services being made available. Digital Service Providers can use cycle holding balances in conjunction with purchased item priority processing whereby recurring charges for a product offer with the highest offer recurring priority can be accumulated in the cycle holding balance during the cycle and paid first when the full charge amount is available.

Purchased Item Cycle Holding Balance Processing

At the beginning of a purchased item cycle, recurring charges are due. If a subscriber cannot pay for the full recurring charges (for example, the monthly plan fee), then no recurring grants (for example, no voice, no data, no text) are provided. The Charging Application does not grant any assets (for example, minutes, bytes, SMS) until the full charge amount is paid. During recurring processing, the Charging Application accumulates funds in the cycle holding balance until there are enough funds to pay the full recurring charges.

The following summarizes cycle holding balance processing:

  • The Charging Application performs recurring processing (recurring charges are due). Typically, recurring processing occurs at the beginning of the purchased item cycle, but if recurring processing fails, it can occur in the middle of the purchased item cycle.
  • On recurring processing, the Charging Application performs an Advice of Charge (AoC) to calculate the cost of the offer recurring charge, and transfers the required currency from the source balance(s) (the balances in the subscriber's wallet that could be used to pay for recurring charges) to the cycle holding balance where the currency is reserved (held) as needed.
  • If the required currency for the recurring charges to succeed are present, the charge is performed from the cycle holding balance and recurring processing proceeds.
  • If the required currency for the recurring charges to succeed are not present, then recurring processing fails and the transferred currency is held in the cycle holding balance until more currency is supplied or the cycle terminates. When the subscriber recharges or tops up (before the cycle terminates), the added currency is transferred to the cycle holding balance. As soon as the cycle holding balance has enough funds for the recurring charges, the charge is performed from the cycle holding balance and recurring processing proceeds.
  • At the end of the purchased item cycle, if the subscriber does not have enough currency accumulated in the cycle holding balance to pay the full cost of the recurring charges for the cycle, upon transition to the next cycle period, the reserved amount is forfeited. That is, the amount is debited from the cycle holding balance and the subscriber loses these funds.

    For example, if the recurring charge for a cycle is $5 and the subscriber has $3 in the wallet, $3 is reserved in the cycle holding balance. If at the end of the cycle, the subscriber still cannot pay the full $5, then $3 in the cycle holding balance is debited from the cycle holding balance.

    If recurring processing has not succeeded by the end of a purchased item cycle due to insufficient fund in the cycle holding balance, a Period Write Off event is generated that reports the amount forfeited from the cycle holding balance and the estimated recurring charge that was required for recurring processing to succeed.

The amount accumulated in the cycle holding balance never exceeds the full cost of the recurring charges.

When there are multiple purchased items with cycle holding balances, the following prioritization for recurring processing is used to determine which cycle holding balance recharges are transferred to:

  1. Cycle period start.
  2. Offer priority for recurring processing.
  3. Purchase order (purchase time).

If two or more purchased items have cycles beginning at the same time, the Charging Application allocates the funds in the wallet to the cycle holding balance of the offer that has the highest offer priority first. If two or more purchased items have cycles beginning at the same time and also have the same offer priority, then the purchase time order is used to determine the order in which the cycle holding balances in the wallet receive available funds.

If recurring processing fails for a purchased item cycle, and the offer is defined with the ContinueAfterFailure option (option set to true), then recurring processing continues for other purchased items (using the prioritization for allocating funds to cycle holding balances as described above).

If recurring processing fails for a purchased item cycle, and the offer is not defined with the ContinueAfterFailure option (option set to false), no other purchased item cycles are processed.

Note: A cycle holding balance is available (a valid balance to be considered during rating) during the entire recurring rating operation for the purchased item cycle, and is not available otherwise. That is, when doing recurring rating for a purchased item cycle, the cycle holding balance for that purchased item is available for consumption, normalizations, basis of rating formulas, and selecting whether to attempt a rate table. In any other rating operation, the cycle holding balance is treated as not available.

Cycle Holding Balance Requirements

The balance template selected for a cycle holding balance must have the following characteristics:
  • Simple balance
  • Non-aggregated

  • Prepaid (credit limit = 0)

To have a cycle holding balance, a product offer or bundle must have the following characteristics:
  • The cancellation proration policy must be no refund.
  • The template specified for the cycle holding balance should be the same template or class used by the recurring charge components so that the amount is transferable to the cycle holding balance.
  • The cycle cannot be on a one time offer or on a bundle composed of all one time offers. Only product offers and bundles with cycles can have cycle holding balances.
  • One of the balances charged by the recurring charge components needs to be an “actual” currency balance for AoC to work (AoC is used to estimate the amount to transfer to and reserve in the cycle holding balance).

If a cycle holding balance template is defined both for a product offer and for a bundle that contains the product offer, the Charging Application uses the template defined in the bundle to create the product offer cycle holding balance.

Each purchased offer or bundle has its own cycle holding balance.

Events Generated for Impacts on Cycle Holding Balances

A bit flag in Event Detail Records (EDRs) identifies an updated balance as a cycle holding balance.

Information about the purchased item cycle for which the cycle holding balance reserves an amount is recorded in EDRs, including:
  • The purchased item cycle start time.
  • The purchased item cycle end time.
  • The purchased item cycle interval ID.
  • The resource ID of the purchased offer or bundle.

When an amount is transferred to the cycle holding balance, a BalanceTransfer event is generated.

When a recurring charge and recurring grant completes successfully, a Recurring event is generated.

When the amount in the cycle holding balance is forfeited at the end of a recurring period, a PeriodWriteOff event is generated that reports:
  • The amount forfeited from the cycle holding balance.
  • The estimated recurring charge amount that was required for recurring processing to succeed.
For information about EDRs, see the discussion about MATRIXX Event Detail Records in MATRIXX Integration.