How to set up recurring payments
Lots of shops want to accept payments in recurring intervals without the cardholder having to reenter his/her credit card information. This is ideal for dating services (to charge monthly fees) or mobile phone companies (to add talk time when a limit is exceeded). This logic is applicable in many instances – but in general it's a way for the merchant to store the cardholders’ payment card information without having to be PCI certified (as Bambora is).
At Bambora, recurring payments are called subscriptions. The idea is to create a subscription with Bambora. From this subscription several transactions can be made. Finally, when the cardholder terminates the subscription at the merchant, the subscription to Bambora is deleted.
Notice: IP address
Add your IP address under API/Webservices -> Access in your Bambora administration to complete recurring payments.
The subscription life cycle
The subscription goes through these steps:
Step 1
The card holder enters his/her credit card information, which is cleared up against the acquirer (via Bambora). This is done through the Bambora payment window. The parameter named subscription must be set to the value 1 and the parameter named subscriptiontype must be set to “recurring”. This tells Bambora that this transaction is to be made as a subscription and that Bambora has to store the credit card information for creating recurring payments.
Step 2
Bambora stores the credit card information and returns a reference for the credit card to the merchant. This reference is named subscription ID. The parameter named
subscriptionid has the value of this reference. It is returned as GET-parameter on the
accepturl and the
callbackurl.
Step 3
The value of the parameter must be stored in the merchant system with the other customer information. When it is time for the merchant to accept money from the
card holder (e.g. the first day in a month), the following operations are made:
- a. The merchant system calls the Bambora web service function named authorize. Here the reference named subscriptionid is added as parameter in order to create a transaction on behalf of the credit card information stored in Bambora.
PHP example
<?php
$epay_params = array();
$epay_params['merchantnumber'] = "ENTER YOUR MERCHANT NUMBER HERE";
$epay_params['subscriptionid'] = "ENTER THE SUBSCRIPTIONID RETURNED FROM EPAY HERE";
$epay_params['orderid'] = "1234";
$epay_params['amount'] = "9995";
$epay_params['currency'] = "208";
$epay_params['instantcapture'] = "0";
$epay_params['fraud'] = "0";
$epay_params['transactionid'] = "-1";
$epay_params['pbsresponse'] = "-1";
$epay_params['epayresponse'] = "-1";
$client = new SoapClient('https://ssl.ditonlinebetalingssystem.dk/remote/subscription.asmx?WSDL');
$result = $client->authorize($epay_params);
if($result->authorizeResult == true)
{
$transactionid = $result->transactionid;
}
else
{
//Error - see pbsresponse and epayresponse
}
?>
- b. Bambora replies on success with a unique reference to the transaction named transactionid.
- c. The merchant system then captures the transaction by calling the Bambora payment webservice with the transactionid as a parameter. Please notice that the parameter instantcapture can be set on step “a” which means that this step “c” can be skipped. Please notice: The instantcapture parameter can only be used if the merchant receives the product/service immediately.
PHP example
<?php
$epay_params = array();
$epay_params['merchantnumber'] = "ENTER YOUR MERCHANT NUMBER HERE";
$epay_params['transactionid'] = "ENTER THE TRANSACTIONID HERE";
$epay_params['amount'] = "9995";
$epay_params['pbsResponse'] = "-1";
$epay_params['epayresponse'] = "-1";
$client = new SoapClient('https://ssl.ditonlinebetalingssystem.dk/remote/payment.asmx?WSDL');
$result = $client->capture($epay_params);
if($result->captureResult == true)
{
//Capture OK
}
else
{
//Error - see pbsResponse and epayresponse
}
?>
Step 4
To terminate a subscription, the merchant system calls the web service function named
deletesubscription on the
subscription web service. All credit card information is deleted in
Bambora's system, and no more recurring payments can be made on the subscription.
When the card expires
When the credit card expires, the cardholder has to create a new subscription. Follow these steps:
1. The merchant system calls the function
deletesubscription on the
subscription web service. The reference named
subscriptionid is added as a parameter in order to tell
Bambora's system which subscription is to be deleted.
2. The merchant system then deletes the reference to the subscription in its own system.
3. The merchant system now tells the
card holder to enter his/her credit card information in the payment window. Step number 1 in the section above is repeated to create a new subscription.
