Managing payment methods availability

Overview

When payments are processed via Payment Page, the customer can select any of the payment methods available within the current project. As a rule, relatively few payment methods are supported for one project, which means that their full list does not overload the payment form, and the customer can promptly choose the most convenient method to pay. In standard situations, this approach ensures comfortable user experience and high conversion rates.

However, in certain cases—due to the project's specifics and the payment methods and currencies used—improving user experience may involve managing payment method availability, so that the customer can select out of the smaller range of methods rather than all available.

Figure 1. Possible situations with choosing a payment method: in a typical case, with an abundance of enabled methods and when filtering methods


To ensure flexibility in different situations, the platform supports the following options of managing payment method availability.

  • Availability determined by the merchant or directive filtering—when the web service indicates directly which methods should not be available for selection within the specific payment session. When this filtering option is used, the excluded methods are determined by the web service and are specified each time in the request for opening Payment Page (as a value of the hide parameter) while the platform processes the request and hides these methods from the selection.
  • Availability determined by the platform or parametric filtering—when the platform automatically excludes the methods that are not relevant for the customer's country or the currency of the specific payment. When this filtering option is used, the first step is to set the filtering parameters and the relevance of different methods for different countries within the specific project (this configuration can be quite flexible since different projects allow for more specialised configuration). After this functionality has been configured and implemented, the excluded methods are determined by the platform each time according to the algorithms of its work and the value of the selected parameter—the country or the currency.
  • Combined approach—with the use of both options. When this approach is used, the methods excluded out of all available are determined both with the help of automated filtering by a specified parameter and the values inflexibly specified in the request.

Each of these options can be useful in specific situations, in particular, when there is a need to avoid currency conversion and prevent declined payments in cases when the currency specified in the request is different from the currencies supported for the payment method selected by the customer. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that overdoing the filtering (excluding way too many methods) can take away the customer's opportunity to pay with the method most convenient for them and may lead to decreasing conversion rates. Moreover, from the technical standpoint it is possible to hide all methods supported for the project in question and leave the customer without any available payment methods at all.

To avoid such issues and manage method availability efficiently, particularly in cases where it is the most applicable and relevant (for example, when you work in specific regions or when you use specific processing scenarios), discuss relevant business goals and filtering options with your ecommpay account manager and carefully analyse preferences and challenges of your customers. In addition, together with these options or even instead of them, you can set up the capability of arranging payment methods on the page.

Methods availability determined by the merchant

General information

Directive filtering allows you to hide those payment methods that are available within the current project but are not relevant for a particular payment due to region- or customer-specific reasons and other factors. With this filtering option, the page for selecting payment methods displays to the customer all available methods except for the hidden ones.

Figure 2. Possible situations with choosing a payment method: without filtering and with filtering


However, if the payment is to be processed with the use of only one payment method or group, you might consider setting up the capability of preselecting payment methods and groups (details).

Use

If you need to filter out particular payment methods within a single Payment Page session, specify the hide parameter in the request for opening Payment Page. The value of this parameter is the code of the method to be hidden (according to the reference). If there is more than one method specified, the values should be separated by a comma. The codes are the same that are used for preselecting payment methods, but keep in mind that you cannot use the codes for preselecting payment method groups. Hiding groups of payment methods is only possible by specifying each method, not the group. In the following example, the WeChat and Alipay payment methods are excluded from the list of methods available for the customer within this payment.

No additional actions are required for setting up and using this functionality.

In the following example, the WeChat and Alipay payment methods are excluded from the list of methods available for the customer within this payment.

{
   "project_id": 43,
   "payment_id": "456790",
   "payment_currency": "USD",
   "payment_amount": 131970,
   "customer_id": "customer_12", 
   "hide": "wechat, alipay", // codes of the payment methods to be hidden
   "signature": "TSzdE5rJZaA9TYAKoGpfXriFf82MxF..."
 }

Methods availability determined by the platform

General information

Parametric filtering ensures automatic hiding of those payment methods that are available within the current project but are not relevant for the country or currency of a particular payment. With this filtering option, the page for selecting payment methods displays to the customer only relevant payment methods with relevancy determined by the specific criteria.

For example, if within the current project payment method availability is determined by currency, and in general situations, standard card payments, Blik, Open Banking in the UK, and Open Banking in Germany are usually available, when the request for opening Payment Page specifies the currency of Polish zloty (PLN), then the customer will be shown the selection of standard card payments and the Blik payment methods.

Figure 3. Possible situations with choosing a payment method: without filtering and with filtering


You can choose which parameter will be used for filtering (country or currency) and how to filter individual methods depending on their specific characteristics and the characteristics of the web service, following which filtering will be configured accordingly. Keep in mind that once set up, the option to filter payment methods by currency is applied each time when Payment Page is invoked. For filtering by the country, the option is applied only when the request for opening the payment form contains the customer's country code (without this code, all methods available for the project will be shown to the customer). Other than the aforementioned considerations, no actions are required once this functionality is set up.

Setup

To set up parametric filtering, proceed as follows:

  1. Determine the following: which projects require this functionality, which parameter will be used for filtering (the customer's country or the payment currency), and whether you need to configure exceptions or specific filtering rules for individual payment methods.

    If needed, consult with your ecommpay account manager at this step.

  2. Pass your requirements for setting up this functionality to the ecommpay technical support and agree upon the setup timeline and testing needs for this functionality.
  3. Receive from the ecommpay specialists the notification that the functionality has been set up and,if necessary, test the work of the payment form with this functionality used.

Use

Once the functionality of filtering payment methods by the currency is set up, no actions by the web service are required since the payment currency (passed in the payment_currency parameter) is a required parameter for invoking Payment Page. Filtering by this parameter will be carried out automatically.

Once the functionality of filtering payment methods by the country is set up, the web service needs to be configured in order to pass in the requests for opening Payment Page relevant country codes (the customer's country is specified in the region_code parameter), according to the reference. If the country code is specified in the request, filtering by this parameter will be carried out automatically. If not, this filtering option will not be applied.

Related links

The following articles can be useful when you work with the functionality of filtering payment methods: