The business events associated with event-driven payments include events relating to the order life cycle and also to events relating to refund situations. These events are occurrences of significance to the system that can involve the storage and validation of payment information; the capture, release, and shipment of orders; and the return of orders or correction of payment information. Basically, when an event occurs that involves having to know what a customer needs to pay for a purchase (or how the customer should be credited), the event-driven payments subcomponent is responsible for reading the payment rules that apply to the payment method involved and triggering the appropriate action.
Summarized, the event-driven payments business events that are associated with order and returns processing are shown in the following list. These events apply to all WebSphere Commerce business models.
- Pre-order authorization (store payment information and validate it) - storeAndValidate event
- Order capture (when the Buy button is clicked) - primePayment event
- Release to fulfillment (goods are ready to ship) - reservePayment event
- Fulfillment (goods have shipped and shipment is confirmed) - finalizePayment event
- Return merchandise authorization (RMA) capture - primeRefund event
- Credit release - finalizeRefund event
- Edits (changes to payment amounts or payment methods, or late edits) - edit event
- Last chance edit - editRelease event (Darwyn)
- Order cancellation - cancelOrder event
- Triggering actions - triggerActions event
The payment actions that are executed during the processing of each business event vary according to the payment methods involved and their matching payment rules. For example, the payment actions defined for a credit card during order capture will probably be different from the payment actions defined for an electronic check during the same order capture event. Also, all stores do not process payments the same way. Some stores might not accept a particular brand of credit card, for example. The advantage of using event-driven payment rules is that you can configure the payment behaviors that suit the commerce transaction needs of your store.
Customers can submit orders that have a zero total payment amount. The payment event subcomponents, primePayment, reservePayment, and finalizePayment will process the order without initiating a payment action or generating an error due to lack of payment information. The order must be a zero total amount, including shipping or other charges.
Edit events happen two ways: by adding, removing, or updating payment information, and through the triggerActions event.
For more information about specific business events, refer to the following topics:
Order life-cycle events
- storeAndValidatePayment business event
- primePayment business event
- edit business event
- reservePayment business event
- (Darwyn) editRelease business event
- finalizePayment business event
- cancelOrder business event
- triggerActions business event
Refund events
In addition to handling these events, the events-driven payments subcomponent provides query facilities that enable Customer Service Representatives to respond to inquiries regarding the payment status of an order.