24 Must-Haves For Payment Processing With Dynamics AX 2012/Dynamics 365 Enterprise

By Afshin Alikhani, Founder and Chairman, Retail Realm

As Retail Realm has been providing Payment Processing solutions for Microsoft Dynamics® AX/Dynamics 365 Enterprise for many years, we’re often asked how our software developments are different from others. Retailers and resellers are hearing from many processors about solutions integrated with Dynamics AX, but we’ve found some are wondering what integrated really means. For example, are all features and functions supported? And if not, which have been left out? Some retailers opt for these software systems only to soon experience buyer’s remorse when they realize these integrations did not provide everything their company needed.

The answers to what is included in a solution are key to informed decision-making. It’s important to look at payment solutions past the marketing pitch and analyze them on a more granular level. This article will help to point out the main features and functions every retailer should consider before implementing a payment software system.

Developing Integrations For Markets
Every time Retail Realm starts a development project with a processor, we identify which features they already support and then analyze based on these features in which market segment(s) the solution best fits. With regards to Dynamics AX/Dynamics 365 Enterprise, to best service those markets, it might not require only one integration but potentially up to four different integrations: Modern POS, Enterprise POS, Sales Order Processing (SOP Stations in the back office), and Call Center solutions.

Many of our partners and customers have asked which features they should consider in selecting a payment processing integration. We’ve identified the top 24 in the form of a checklist.

Features

1. Credit Card Processing — Most solutions will include this.
2. Debit Card Processing — Most solutions will include this.
3. Cash Back — Not all processors handle cash back; some Gateways are limited in the Cash Back functionality.
4. Gift Card — Some processors have their own Gift/Loyalty solution as part of their card payment solution offering; others link to large third-party solutions such as Give.
5. Tip Handling — The processors do handle tips but AX is not designed for tip handling; this requires changes in the core AX solution, which impacts not just the Point of Transaction but also the financial reporting of tips and its disbursement accounting wise.
6. Fuel/Petrol Cards — Most processors do not handle fleet fuel cards.
7. Pennies/Charities — This is especially important for European charities where the rounding up goes to charity as part of card processing.
7. Tax Free Shopping — Gives the Duty Free shopping money back on the purchased Credit Card.
9. Check (Cheque) Authorization — This is a secondary link which may include ACH or may be just verifying and securing an authorization that the fund is in the account and assigned to it.
10. Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) — This is a great feature for the retailer and processors; the processor will present the purchased value in the currency denomination of the issuing country (Euro, Japanese yen, etc.) and if that currency is selected the processor shares the profit of the currency conversion with the retailer.
11. EBT — Government subsidies provided to people below a certain income and managed through credit card payments by the use of a specific EBT card. Required for Supermarket and Grocery sector. This requires changes in AX as EBT transactions are tax-free and requires a change in the standard AX workflow when dealing with item tax.
12. eWIC — Government subsidies provided to people below a certain income and managed through credit card payments by the use of a specific eWIC card. Required for Supermarket and Grocery sector. This requires changes in AX as EBT transactions are tax-free and requires a change in the standard AX workflow when dealing with item tax.
13. FSA/HSA — Pharmacy supermarket card; changes are required in AX as only pharmacy-identified products can be purchased with this card.
14. Mobile Top-up — Links the payment to mobile phone Pay as You Go phone operators and adds funds to specific phone numbers on the provider network.
15. Decline Minimizer/Auto Updater — This is required, especially in clubs and where there are repeat customers; the Auto Updater will automatically update the customer newly issued credit card and associate it with the customer credit card token. In this way there is no need to ask for the card again upon issue of a new updated card. This is a standard feature of Visa/Master Card but few processors have adopted the implementation of this feature.
16. Offline Authorization — Ensures that some ceiling authorization is supported when not able to link to a payment processor.
17. Secured Hosted Payment Page — This is mandatory for Sales Order Processing and Call Center where you do not have hardware to swipe the card as the customer is not present. The Secured Hosted Page offers a prompt where the card number entered is immediately tokenized upon entry and thus at no point in time the retailer handles the actual card data.
18. Pin Steering (when to use Debit vs CC) — This advises based on the total amount of the transaction on a debit card with credit card logo whether it is better for the retailer to handle this card as a debit or as a credit.
19. Signature Capture — Captures the signature and associates it with the token and receipt.
20. NFC Capable — Near Field Communication for newer credit cards as well as such payments as Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay etc.
21. Customer not Present — Some processors only support customer present and have no solution for customer not present. This makes the use of such solution in an Omni Channel environment problematic as the token generated in the Sales Order Processing or Call Center cannot be recalled at the Store for return.
22. Omni Channel Meta Token — There are other data associated with the token when authorized that can be analyzed and linked to loyalty and other security monitoring solutions. It ensures that the processor sends the retailer this information and maps it with the native Dynamics meta token message.
23. Omni Channel Token — Ensures the same token can be used throughout the organization.
24. e-commerce — Uses the same processor on the customer’s e-commerce website.

Processor Options
We’ve found retailers often have preferred banking and relationships with financial establishments. Some of our Retail Realm integrations are direct to these processors while others are to Gateway processors that link to a large number of financial institutions (examples: Shift4 and Cayan). This means more options, more flexibility.

When selecting the processor and/or gateway, the customer and reseller must also consider:

• cost of processing
• existing hardware the customer may have
• EMV compliance
• PCI validated solutions
• P2PE compliance
• the solution is out of scope so as to reduce the risk and cost of compliance

Afshin Alikhani is a business operational analyst with 30+ years in the computer software industry developing organizational end-to-end processes for companies primarily in the retail and hospitality sectors. He is the Founder and Chairman of Retail Realm, a leading multinational retail-centric software development and distribution company.