You must create a payment profile before you can begin processing payments.
Merchants who use multiple payment gateways for their webstore will want to utilize the load balancing feature included in Payment Profiles.
Multiple accounts means you can distribute monthly limits across each account, manage risk more evenly, and most importantly, keep your web store online even if one payment gateway goes offline for whatever reason.
Many merchant service providers who have payment gateways already offer load balancing options -- either natively or as a service up-sell. Maropost for Commerce's load balancing rules are complementary. If your merchant account has its own load balancing built in, you can use payment profiles to route transactions to a specific payment gateway where they are further load balanced to the appropriate merchant account. If your merchant account doesn't offer load balancing you can create a payment profile and set your own rules.
Mouse over your user name in the top right corner of the Main Menu bar, and select Settings from the Settings menu.
Select Profiles from the left hand nav bar to view the Payment Gateways index page. Then, click the [+New Payment Profile] button.
Profile Settings
- Label -- enter a label for this Payment Profile that will appear in other placed within the application.
- Name -- enter a name for this Payment Profile.
- Load Balance Algorithm -- select from one of the following algorithms:
- Weighted -- calculates the total transactions within the defined time period as a percentage of each payment gateway's monthly limit. Automatically routes transactions to the proper payment gateway in order to ensure that the percentage remains consistent across each of the gateways.
- Priority -- Route all transactions to the gateway with the highest priority (where Priority = 1 has highest priority, Priority = 2 has next highest priority, and so on). When the gateway hits its limit, transactions will be automatically routed to the gateway of the next highest precedence. Once the limits are reset, then transactions resume being routed to the gateway of the highest priority.
- Round Robin -- Alternates transactions between payment gateways. Use this option when none of your payment gateways have limits, and you just want to distribute charge-back risk across each of the gateways.
- Load Balance Strategy -- select whether the load balancing should be based on total transaction amount, or on total number of transactions during the time period.
- Weight Reset -- this field will appear if you selected a Weighted load balance algorithm, and have added at least one payment gateway to the profile. The default setting is "Monthly". Change it to "Daily" only if your merchant bank is limiting your merchant account to daily limits.
- Default -- you can create multiple Payment Profiles. Check this box if you want this profile to be the default one.
- Add Payment Gateway -- click this button to add a payment gateway to this profile. You will only be able to select gateways having a monthly limit type that is the same as the load balance strategy you've selected above.
Gateway Profile Settings
- Weighted Percent -- this field appears when you are using a weighted load balance algorithm. When using multiple gateways, you can determine the distribution percentage between each of the gateways. The distribution will be either based on amount, or number of transactions, depending upon the load balance strategy you selected.
- Priority -- this field appears when you are using a priority load balance algorithm. The lower the value, the higher the priority (e.g. '1' has highest priority).
- Current Percentage (display only) -- this field appears only when you are using a weighted load balance algorithm. It shows either the total transaction count or amount processed in the current time period as a percentage of the gateway's limit, according to how you have set the load balance strategy.
- Amount Processed (display only) -- shows the total amount processed in the current time period. It will be either month to date, or week to date depending upon what you selected for the Weight Reset period.
- Transaction Count (display only) -- shows the total number of transactions processed in the current time period.
