COF purchase with automatic debiting

Overview

Credential-on-file (COF) purchase with automatic debiting is a payment type which uses an initial request to initiate a series of fund transfers from customer to merchant by using previously stored payment credentials without validation of the payment instrument (such as card validation code, or CVC). This payment type includes regular purchases.

COF purchases with automatic debiting are used for purchases in which the same payment instrument for repeatable miscellaneous purchases with fixed amount and schedule, for instance to pay monthly fee for a subscription. COF purchases with automatic debiting are convenient for the customer and the merchant because they can be sure that payments will be performed automatically, with no additional actions on their part.

Payment model

A COF purchase becomes available only after its registration, which means making an initial payment—a one-time purchase or a payment instrument verification—with the customer's payment data saved in the platform and COF purchase type specified. The set of parameters required for further processing of the COF purchase can differ depending on the payment method in use.

If all required parameters were specified during COF purchase registration, the merchant or the customer does not need to initiate the scheduled COF purchase, as in this case withdrawal of funds is initiated automatically by the payment platform. A separate recurring operation is used for each withdrawal.

If required, you can change the payment schedule and/or amount or even cancel the payment altogether. To change the payment schedule and/or amount, you need to submit an update request to the payment platform via Gate. To cancel the payment, you submit a cancel request. To initiate the update and cancel requests, you use the recurring_update and recurring_cancel operations, respectively.

In rare instances, a COF purchase with automatic debiting may require you to send another request to submit additional information requested by one of the stakeholders, for example to provide cardholder address which is missing from the initial request. In such cases, when working via Gate, a callback with the names of parameters for clarifying information is sent from the platform to the web service and payment processing is suspended until a request with the required information is sent from the web service—clarification, while when working via Payment Page, all actions are carried out without the merchant's web service involved.

If the payment method supports refunds, after completing a COF purchase with automatic debiting you can return your customers their money, if needed. The total amount of refund cannot be larger than the total debited amount. You initiate a refund by sending a refund request to the payment platform or select the corresponding action in the payment information tab of the Dashboard interface. Refund is performed by using the refund operation.

The rest of this section describes any possible statuses of a COF purchase with automatic debiting and the related operations. More information about processing COF purchases is provided in the Gate section.

Payment statuses

The following table describes the statuses of any COF purchase with automatic debiting.

The recurring operation statuses

The following table describes the statuses of the sale operation.

The recurring_update and recurring_cancel operations statuses

The following table describes the statuses of the recurring_update and recurring_cancel operations.

The refund operation statuses

The refund operation statuses coincide with the recurring operation statuses.