Choose your features¶
Aptean Pay is a set of building blocks. Pick the ones your workflow needs. Some are switched on per merchant, so confirm those with Aptean before you build on them.
What is available¶
| Feature | What it does | Guide |
|---|---|---|
| Card payments | Charge a card collected in the Aptean Pay iFrame. | Create a payment |
| ACH payments | Debit a US bank account. Clears over several days. | Capture bank details |
| Saved payment methods | Keep a card or bank account on file and charge it again. | Saved payment methods |
| Pre-authorisation | Hold funds now and capture them within 7 days. | Pre-authorise and capture |
| Voids | Cancel a card payment before it settles, so the merchant is not charged the discount rate. | Cancel or void |
| Refunds | Return all or part of a completed payment. | Refunds |
| Payment requests | Invoice a payer, who pays in the payer portal. | Create a payment request |
| Credit memos | Give a payer credit to use against what they owe. | Credit memos |
| Hosted checkout | Redirect to an Aptean-hosted payment page. | Hosted checkout |
| Customers | Group payments, payment requests and payment methods under one customer record. | - |
Switched on per merchant¶
These depend on the merchant's account settings. If one is off, the related call is refused. It does not quietly do something else. Ask Aptean support to enable what you need in staging and production.
| Setting | Off by default? | Effect when on |
|---|---|---|
| ACH payments | Yes | The merchant can accept bank payments. |
| Customers | Yes | Payments and payment requests can reference customerId or customerNumber. Passing either while it is off is refused. |
| Consolidated payments | Yes | One payment can pay several payment requests at once. |
| Partial payments | Yes | A payer can pay part of a payment request. The merchant can also require a reason. |
| Voids | Yes | cancelPayment voids an unsettled card payment instead of refusing it. |
| Hosted checkout | Yes | Needs a checkout API key and a product ID as well. |
| Convenience fees | Yes | The payer is charged a fee on card payments in the payer portal and hosted pages. |
| Credit memos | No | Payers can apply credit to payments. |
Convenience fees are payer-facing only
A fee can only be added by a payer, in the payer portal or a hosted page. A server-side
createPayment from your integration cannot charge one. If your merchant passes card fees on
to payers, use payment requests or hosted checkout
rather than charging from your server.
Deciding what you need¶
Do you have an invoice in your system already? Use payment requests. The payer is emailed or texted a link and you never see their card. Turn on partial payments and consolidated payments if your payers pay several invoices at once or pay in instalments.
Is the payer at a checkout you control? Collect the card or bank details with the
JS SDK and charge them with createPayment. If you do not
want to build any payment UI, use hosted checkout.
Do you charge the same payer again? Save the payment method. See Saved payment methods.
Is the final amount unknown at order time? Pre-authorise and capture when it ships. The hold expires after 7 days. Credit and convenience fees cannot be used on a pre-authorisation.
Do orders get cancelled the same day? Ask for voids. A voided card payment never settles: the payer's authorisation hold drops off after a few days and never reaches their statement, and the merchant is not charged the discount rate (%). The transaction fee for the original sale still applies. After settlement, or for ACH, you refund instead.
Do you issue credit rather than money back? Use credit memos.
Customers¶
A customer is optional for every call. Without one, payments and payment requests stand alone.
With the customers feature on, you can link them to a customer, identified by Aptean Pay's id
or by your own customerNumber. customerNumber is unique per merchant, so use your ERP's
customer number for it.