Payments

CMP Converged Monetisation Platform. The MDS Global product that supports customer care and billing for digital service providers. Payment functionality allows subscribers to make payments and have those payments reflected on their CMP account In the Cloud Monetisation Platform, a billing entity that can be used to manage payments on one or more subscriptions or payments for services. An account can hold details such as payments or invoices.. Payments include:

• Direct debits

  A direct debit is an instruction from a customer In the context of the Cloud Monetisation Platform, an individual or organisation who has signed an agreement to take goods and services from a service provider. A customer receives a bill associated with one or more subscriptions, and can be a single end user or a large company with many subscriptions assigned to one agreement. (debtor) to their bank or payment services provider, authorising an organisation (creditor) to collect variable or fixed amounts from their account, providing the customer is given notice of the collection amounts and dates. The direct debit instruction is also known as a mandate.

• Recurring payments

  Customers can opt to pay their bills automatically, a defined number of days after the bill date, based on their payment terms. Automatic payment methods include direct debit and credit/debit cards.

  Recurring PrePayments

  Customers can purchase pre-paid bolt-on An addition to a subscriber's main plan or product; also sometimes called an add-on. packages that are paid for on a recurring basis, for example every 30 days. Payments can be done by credit/debit card or from the customer's pre-paid cash balance. Dedicated daemons detect files containing details of rejected payments and load those details into CMP.

• Non recurring payments

  Non-recurring payments occur when, rather than opting to pay their bill automatically each month, a subscription A billing entity that incurs a charge. Examples include a network attached device whose usage you want to measure and charge for, or a monthly software subscription chooses to pay on their own terms, a payment by cash, for example. Records of these payments must be loaded into CMP and reconciled against the subscription’s account.

For more information on Payments in CMP, see Communications in CMP 8.1 Payments Functionality Guide.

The Payments process includes the following jobs:

• Mandate Registrations

  This job is responsible for generating a batch of new direct debit instructions for transmission to external systems, which in turn transfer these instructions to the paying banks and building societies. Downstream daemons extract this batch, convert the instructions to the required external system format and transmit them to the required destination. This job is typically scheduled to run once per day, excluding non-banking days.

• Mandate Revisions

  When new direct debit instructions are sent to an external payments system, some instructions can fail, for example, due to incorrect bank details. Successful instructions may also subsequently be amended or cancelled by the customer. When CMP receives files containing rejected, amended or cancelled instructions, these are automatically detected by a dedicated daemon A computer program that runs as a background process, rather than being under the control of an interactive user., which creates a mandate revisions batch in CMP for each file received. This job updates or cancels the relevant mandate records in CMP. Cancellation in CMP typically involves reverting the account to a manual payment type, which often involves charging an administration fee. This job is automatically triggered whenever a new mandate revisions batch has been created.

• Recurring Payments

  This job creates a batch of payment and refund records that are due for settlement. Once this batch has been created, it is detected by dedicated daemons that format the batch and transmit it to the appropriate external payments system. It is possible to run the job without passing in a date, in which case the current date is used.

  This job runs in three modes:

  • BANK and CARD to distinguish between direct debit transactions and credit/debit card transactions.
  • CHEQUE to process manual payment refunds as cheque refunds.

  This job also creates a second batch to post the extracted payments and refunds to the sales ledger. Once this batch has been created, it is detected by dedicated daemons that format the batch and transmit it to the target sales ledger. This job is typically scheduled to run daily

• Recurring Payments Rejections

  When recurring payment and refund transactions are sent to an external payment system, some transactions can fail, for example due to insufficient funds or lost and stolen cards. These rejected transactions must be processed by CMP. When CMP receives files containing rejected transactions, these are automatically detected by a dedicated daemon, which creates a rejected payment batch in CMP for each file received. This job generates a batch that contains records to reverse each failed transaction from the sales ledger. Once this batch has been created, it is detected by dedicated daemons that format the batch and transmit it to the target sales ledger. This job also generates workflows (for example, to send a communication to the customer), processes soft declines to temporarily exclude the account from the automated payment process and processes hard declines to revert the account to the default (manual) payment to make alternative arrangements for collection of amounts due. This job is automatically triggered whenever a new rejected payment batch has been created

• Recurring Pre Payments

  This job creates a batch of payments that are due for settlement. Once this batch has been created, it is detected by dedicated daemons that format the batch and transmit it to the appropriate external payments system. This job runs in two modes - Card or Balance - to distinguish between balance transactions and credit/debit card transactions. If no mode is selected, an error is displayed to the user A person with the capability to log in to the CMP GUI software, such as a customer service advisor or agent.. Separate module properties are available for both the card and balance offset. This is the number of days to look ahead for payments that are due in order to pull payments early in order to handle any rejections and end any associated allowances ahead of automatic renewal on the OCS. Each invocation of the job produces an audit of the accounts that were included in the extract. This is a scheduled job.

• Recurring Pre Payments Rejections

  Dedicated daemons detect files containing details of rejected payments and load those details into CMP. This job detects batches of rejected payments and for each rejected payment, the status of the payment is updated, the associated package allowances are expired and a Comms is generated to inform the customer of the rejected payment.

• Non Recurring Payments

  When CMP receives non-recurring payment files, these are automatically detected by a dedicated daemon, which creates a non-recurring payments batch in CMP for each file received. This job is matches payments to accounts and creates a batch to post the payments to the Sales Ledger. Once the posting batch has been created, it is detected by dedicated daemons that format the batch and transmit the payment information to the target sales ledger. This job is automatically triggered whenever a non-recurring payments batch has been created.

 

For more information on jobs, see the CMP 8.1 Batch Jobs and JSON JavaScript Object Notation. JSON is a lightweight format for storing and transporting data, often used when data is sent from a server to a web page. Schemas Guide. Alternatively, in the Administration Console An operations web console that allows batch jobs to be scheduled, run manually and monitored. The console also provides for viewing and modification of business and user applicable system configuration., navigate to Daily Operations > Jobs. Click any job in the Jobs List for more details.

The following daemons are associated with Payments:

 

For more information on daemons, in the Administration Console, navigate to Daily Operations > Daemons. Click any daemon in the Daemons Listfor more details.

The following probes can be run against Payments jobs and daemons:

Stage	Category	Name	Type	Description
Extract	Mandate Registrations	Completed	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of files produced by the Mandate Registrations Extract daemon today. A value of zero indicates that no outbound files were produced.
Batch	Mandate Registrations	Completed	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of times the Mandate Registrations job has run today. A value of zero indicates the job has not run today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe.
Batch	Mandate Revisions	Completed	SLA	SLA probe that returns the number of CMP configuration errors detected by the Mandate Revisions job today. The SLA is breached if the number of errors is above the defined threshold. These type of errors can be resolved by amending CMP configuration. Because this is an SLA probe, no email alert is issued.
Load	Mandate Revisions	Completed	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of files received by the Mandate Revisions Load daemon today. A value of zero indicates that no inbound files were received today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe.
Batch	Mandate Revisions	Completed	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of times the Mandate Revisions job has run today. A value of zero indicates the job has not run today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe.
Verification	Non Recurring Payments	Account Allocation	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of payment records associated with the account in the most recent batch. If the query returns a value that is above the threshold, an alert will be sent to the recipients configured against the probe.
Verification	Non Recurring Payments	Payments Supplied	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of payment files with no payments. If the query returns a value that is above the threshold, then an alert will be sent to the recipients configured against the probe.
Batch	Non Recurring Payments	Completed	Alert	Alert probe that returns number of times the Non Recurring Payment job has run today. A value of zero indicates the job has not run today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe
Batch	Non Recurring Payments	Completed	SLA	SLA probe that returns the number of CMP configuration errors detected by the Non Recurring Payment job today. The SLA is breached if the number of errors is above the defined threshold. These type of errors can be resolved by amending CMP configuration. Because this is an SLA probe, no email alert is issued.
Verification	Non Recurring Payments	Normal	Alert	Alert Probe which looks for Non Recurring Payments received in a set number of hours. If this query returns a value that is above the threshold, then the alert will be sent to the recipients configured against the probe.
Verification	Non Recurring Payments	No Payment Dates	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of null payment date/time records in the last batch processed. If the query returns a value that is above the threshold, then an alert is sent to the recipients configured against the probe.
Verification	Non Recurring Payments	Invoice Allocation	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of payment records associated with an Invoice in the most recent batch. If the query returns a value that is above the threshold, then an alert will be sent to the recipients configured against the probe.
Load	Non Recurring Payments	Completed	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of files received by the Non Recurring Payment Load daemon today. A value of zero indicates that no inbound files were received today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe.
Transmission	Recurring Payments	Complete (Payments Posting)	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of times the Recurring Payment Posting job has run today. A value of zero indicates the job has not run today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe.
Extract	Recurring Payments	Completed (Bank)	Alert	Alert probe that returns number of bank files produced by Recurring Payment Extract daemon today. A value of zero indicates that no outbound files were produced and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe.
Extract	Recurring Payments	Completed (Bank)	SLA	SLA probe that returns number of files produced by the Recurring Payment Extract job in Bank Mode today. A value of zero indicates that no outbound files were produced and the SLA has been breached. Because this is an SLA probe, no email alert is issued.
Batch	Recurring Payments	Completed (Bank)	Alert	Alert probe that returns number of times the Recurring Payment job was run in Bank Mode today. A value of zero indicates the job has not run today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe.
Batch	Recurring Payments	Completed (Card)	Alert	Alert probe that returns number of times the Recurring Payment Job was run in Card Mode today. A value of zero indicates the job has not run today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe.
Extract	Recurring Payments	Completed (Bank)	SLA	SLA probe that returns number of files produced by the Recurring Payment Extract job in Bank Mode today. A value of zero indicates that no outbound files were produced and the SLA has been breached. Because this is an SLA probe, no email alert is issued.
Extract	Recurring Payments	Completed (Card)	SLA	SLA probe that returns number of files produced by the Recurring Payment Extract job in Card Mode today. A value of zero indicates that no outbound files were produced and the SLA has been breached. Because this is an SLA probe, no email alert is issued.
Extract	Recurring Payments	Completed (Card)	Alert	Alert probe that returns number of card files produced by Recurring Payment Extract daemon today. A value of zero indicates that no outbound files were produced and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe.
Load	Recurring Payments Rejections	Completed	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of files received by the Recurring Payment Rejection daemon today. A value of zero indicates that no inbound files were received today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe.
Batch	Recurring Payments Rejections	Completed	SLA	SLA probe will returned the number of CMP configuration errors detected today by Recurring Payment Rejections Job today. The SLA is breached if the number of errors is above the defined threshold. These type of errors can be resolved by amending CMP configuration. Because this is an SLA probe, no email alert is issued.
Batch	Recurring Payments Rejections	Completed	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of times the Recurring Payment Rejection job has run today. A value of zero indicates the job has not run today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe.
Transmission	Recurrring Payments Rejections	Complete (Reversals Posting)	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of times the Posting Reversals job has run today. A value of zero indicates the job has not run today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured for this probe.
Batch	Recurring Pre Payment	Completed	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of times that Recurring Pre Payment job has run today. If this query returns a value of zero, this indicates the job has not run today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured on this probe.
Extract	Recurring Pre Payment	Completed	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of times that Recurring Pre Payment daemon has run today. If this query returns a value of zero, this indicates the daemon has not run today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured on this probe.
Batch	Recurring Pre Payment Balance	Completed	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of times that Recurring Pre Payment Balance job has run today. If this query returns a value of zero, this indicates the job has not run today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured on this probe.
Extract	Recurring Pre Payment Balance	Completed	Alert	Alert probe that returns the number of times that Recurring Pre Payment Balance daemon has run today. If this query returns a value of zero, this indicates the daemon has not run today and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured on this probe.

 

For more information on probes, in the Administration Console, navigate to Daily Operations > Probes. Click any probe In the Administration Console architecture, a mechanism which allows for the execution of predefined queries and for the comparison of the results of those queries against pre-configured targets. Probes can be reviewed and managed via the Admin Console. in the Probes List for more details.