Integration Use Cases

Commerce Web Services

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Transaction Reporting – Integration Use Cases

Enabling payment processing is just one aspect of providing a robust payment solution to your merchants. Providing the ability for merchants to manage transactions and perform subsequent transaction processing such as voids, returns, and batch settlement processing is critical to supporting the full transaction lifecycle.

While the Preparing the Application to Transact and Transaction Processing steps are required for all Commerce Web Services integrations, providing transaction management functionality to your merchants is optional, but highly recommended. Furthermore, the decision about whether to include transaction management functionality within your payment solution or leverage a third-party transaction management solution is an important development consideration.

Software companies who want to provide their merchants with transaction management functionality have a few options. Ultimately, it comes down to leveraging service provider/payment processor tools, third-party transaction management tools, or integrating transaction management functionality within your payment solutions from scratch.

When trying to decide the best way to provide such functionality, consider the integration use cases below:

 

Service Provider Processor Solutions

Some service providers and/or payment processors offer their merchants a web-based portal that allows them to perform transaction management functions.

Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages of leveraging these service provider/processor solutions.

 

Advantages

  • Provide merchants with the ability to see the real-time status of each transaction in the service provider and/or processor’s transaction database.
  • Allow merchants to perform subsequent transaction processing functions, such as returns, voids, and batch settlement processing.
  • Provide merchant transaction reporting capabilities.

 

Disadvantages

  • Transaction status information stored in the service provider/processor’s transaction database can become “out-of-sync” with the transaction information stored in the EVO Snap CWS transaction database when processing subsequent transaction processing functions.
  • Often incurs additional costs to merchants to consume the transaction management services offered by the service provider/processor.

 

TMS API Integration

In cases where the merchant does not want to incur additional costs associated with transaction management services provided by their service provider and/or payment processor, or when third-party transaction management solutions are not provided, software companies can integrate transaction management functionality directly within their existing payment solutions through the integration of the Transaction Management Service (TMS) API.

Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages of integrating the Transaction Management Service (TMS) API into the applications.

 

Advantages

  • Seamless integration with CWS allows merchants to retrieve transaction information directly from the CWS transaction database, ensuring data consistency as well as the ability to process subsequent transaction processing functions, such as returns, voids, and batch settlement processing.
  • Provides merchant with customized transaction management features that best match the software company’s transaction processing and reporting requirements.
  • Provides normalized transaction management across multiple service providers and payment processors.

 

Disadvantages

  • Additional time and cost to develop the core transaction management functionality within the payment solution.