Integration points to external payment systems

PolicyCenter provides integration points to two external systems for setting up a payment instrument:

External payment system – The PolicyCenter base configuration supports creating a payment instrument and sending information about the instrument to the billing system.
For demonstration purposes, the base configuration calls a demonstration version of a payment system that PolicyCenter itself implements with PCF pages. You can implement a similar system if you want to directly collect the payment source information and use it to initiate payments. In such an approach, you would not use tokens. You would directly contact the payment processor with the payment source information that you collected and stored.

External payment gateway – The PolicyCenter base configuration supports receiving an up-front payment that uses a new or existing payment instrument and sending information about the instrument and payment to the billing system.
For demonstration purposes, the base configuration calls a demonstration version of a payment gateway system that PolicyCenter itself implements with PCF pages. You can implement a similar system if you want to directly collect the payment source information and use it to initiate payments. In such an approach, you would not use tokens. You would directly contact the payment processor with the payment source information that you collected and stored.

Important: External payment systems and payment gateways return only partial information for payment sources. For example, payment systems do not return entire credit card numbers. Instead, payment systems return tokens as identifiers that let PolicyCenter or its billing system initiate a payment without requiring the entire credit card number or other authentication information.

Warning: Check with your legal department about all regulatory requirements relating to credit card information before going to production.