Payment Method Groups

Are forums working again?

I did want to chime in on this topic, as I spent a lot of time (and a lot of Tessitura Support’s time) trying to figure this out for myself.

The short answer is that Payment Method Groups are largely unnecessary.  They can be used to organize groups of Credit Card Payment Methods for sorting on the Payment Methods screen or custom reporting, but they only have actual ramifications in two specific scenarios:

1. When doing a mass card tokenization operation (surely everyone has done this by now and no-one has actual card numbers in their Tessitura Database, right?), the Payment Method Group is used to assign a Merchant Id under which those cards are tokenized.  This is the only time the “Merchant Id” column in that table is used.  In all other cases the Merchant Id on the Payment Method definition itself is used.
2. If you have multiple “Saved” Payment Methods for a single card type (AMEX, etc.) that allow for billing, then you can use Payment Method Group in the Billing Utility to choose the right one.  I would guess that in 90% of scenarios, you will only have one Payment Method for any particular card type with “For Billing” checked in any particular organization.  The “Control Group” in TR_PMT_METHOD_GROUP is only used to control populating the selection menu for billing utilities or other reports that allow filtering by this field.  In all other situations the Control Group of the Payment Method definition is used, although access to use the Payment Method is controlled via Security Group settings and ignores any Control Grouping.

I had planned to make some changes to our haphazardly configured Payment Method Groups, but apparently the TMS onboarding team likes to set theirs up in a specific way, so I’m just planning to leave it until then.

I can’t remember precisely why I found it problematic, but I advise against attaching anything but the “Default Pmt Method Group” to non-credit card Payment Methods.

FYI, my email notifications still have bad urls in them (i.e. tessituranetwork.com instead of tessitura.com).

Gawain, thank you so much-- that was exactly the answer I was trying to get to.

And, as you may have guessed, I was trying to figure it out in advance of going to TMS. Someone in Development who works with billing was asking me how TMS would impact the Payment Method Groups and I didn't even know what those were to begin with.

Ok, so the TMS onboarding team on the Tessitura side has a particular way they advise to setup Payment Method Groups? And anything that's not a credit card should be set to "Default Pmt Method Group"?

Does anyone else have TMS tips around Payment Method Groups for me?

Gawain, thank you so much-- that was exactly the answer I was trying to get to.

And, as you may have guessed, I was trying to figure it out in advance of going to TMS. Someone in Development who works with billing was asking me how TMS would impact the Payment Method Groups and I didn't even know what those were to begin with.

Ok, so the TMS onboarding team on the Tessitura side has a particular way they advise to setup Payment Method Groups? And anything that's not a credit card should be set to "Default Pmt Method Group"?

Does anyone else have TMS tips around Payment Method Groups for me?

Hi Shelly. 

We have three stores in our one merchant account to capture Web, Dev/Mem, GE/Sales separately. They are defined by Merchant Ids 001, 002, 003.

The non-web store have both Saved and EMV payment methods for each credit card type.  It is important to add the IDs to the TR_PMT_METHOD_GROUP table and the Moto Merchant ID and Retail merchant ID on the corresponding payment methods.

We also use the pledge billing functionality where you select the group.  After we went live, I forgot to change that group and it tripped up our rmonthly run, so it's necessary for that process.

It can also be used for reporting, if needed.

Maybe one of our Tessitura TMS team folks could add a bit more, if there is more or if any of us are providing inaccurate info.

Thanks all!  I hope to see you all at today's community meeting.
Trini