Accessing an external payment system to add a new payment instrument

The following steps show the tasks that you perform and the actions that PolicyCenter takes to access an external payment system:

  1. You start a submission, renewal, or rewrite job.
  2. You quote the policy and navigate to the Payment screen before binding the policy.

    PolicyCenter displays billing methods, payment methods, and associated installment or reporting plans retrieved from the billing system.

  3. You select a billing method and payment schedule, and then preview payment plans retrieved from the billing system. This part of the wizard is similar for all lines of business. In the Payment screen, the user interface that relates to payments is available if you select Custom Billing Options and the New option for Invoicing. The PCF file BillingInvoiceStreamInputSet.pcf provides the user interface for the payments. This PCF file lists payment-related information and provides an option to add payment information for recurring payments. If you do not take the down-payment amount as an up-front payment, PolicyCenter uses the same payment instrument for the down payment as for recurring payments.
  4. PolicyCenter uses the registered billing system plugin (IBillingSystemPlugin) implementation to request the known payment instruments from the billing system. PolicyCenter calls its plugin method getExistingPaymentInstruments.
  5. To add a new payment instrument, in BillingInvoiceStreamInputSet, you click the Add button.

    The action that the Add button takes is to call a method called externalPaymentLocation on the gw.billing.PolicyPeriodBillingInstructionsManager object that the page uses. The externalPaymentLocation method calls a PCF exit point to navigate to the payment system user interface.

    Typically, the payment system is on a separate physical computer across the Internet.

    • For demonstration purposes, the base configuration of this function calls a demonstration version of a payment system that PolicyCenter itself implements.
    • For a production environment, you must change the code for the externalPaymentLocation method to contact your real payment system.
  6. The last step in externalPaymentLocation is to invoke the PCF exit point called CreatePaymentInstrument. Both the demonstration and a real payment system use this exit point. The following table compares the two payment systems:

    Step

    Demonstration payment system

    Real payment system

    1.

    The externalPaymentLocation method sets the value of the paymentSystemURL property on CreatePaymentInstrument to the demonstration payment system.

    The externalPaymentLocation method sets the value of the paymentSystemURL property on CreatePaymentInstrument to the real payment system.

    2.

    The CreatePaymentInstrument exit point transfers control to the NewPaymentInstrument entry point to display CreateSamplePaymentInstrument.pcf, which is the demonstration payment collection page. Do not use this entry point for a real payment system.

    PolicyCenter uses the exit point to transfer control to the external payment system.

    3.

    After you enter a payment, the demonstration payment collection page uses the PCF exit point called FinishPaymentInstrument. Do not use this exit point for a real payment system.

    You enter a new payment instrument in the external payment system.

    4.

    The FinishPaymentInstrument exit point calls the PolicyCenter PCF entry point called JobWithNewPaymentInstrument.

    The payment system navigates to PolicyCenter by using the PolicyCenter PCF entry point JobWithNewPaymentInstrument.
  7. PolicyCenter uses the registered billing system plugin (IBillingSystemPlugin) implementation to notify the billing system of the new payment instrument. PolicyCenter calls the plugin method addPaymentInstrumentTo.

See also