CivicPlus Pay is a secure, PCI-compliant, standalone utility application that local governments can use within Web Central, Web Open, Recreation Management, Community Development (formerly CivicGov), Process Automation and Digital Services (formerly CivicOptimize), and NextRequest. With Pay, you can efficiently take digital payments while giving residents more ways to pay at any time, from anywhere. Our solution supports the latest, secure digital transaction technology with Europay, MasterCard, and Visa (EMV) for chip-based debit and credit card transactions. It also allows residents to remit payment for municipal services online, securely, from a computer, or mobile device.
CivicPlus Pay partners with three well-known payment gateways with top-of-the-line integration support, available functionality, and flexibility. Through partnerships with these vendors, both CivicPlus and the selected gateway can streamline the joint processes and provide added value beyond just integration. View the Full List of Payment Providers.
How CivicPlus Pay Works
CivicPlus is not involved in the transmission, storage, or capture of cardholder data. CivicPlus Pay serves as a facilitator to redirect customers to the payment gateway so that cardholder data is entered directly into the gateway’s system. In the case of card-present transactions, the payment card is entered into a PIN-pad device, which communicates through a tray application directly to the gateway. In both cases, card-present and card-not-present transactions, cardholder data is never exposed to CivicPlus.
Pay sits between the CivicPlus solution and begins working when the customer selects the option to make their payment at the time of checkout from within the solution. Based on the configuration in the solution and in Pay, the customer will be redirected to a hosted form where they will be prompted to enter their card information. This hosted form is the Payment Gateway. The gateway will capture the card data and initiate the process for validating; this process will include going through the Processor, Card Associations (such as Visa, AmEx, Discover, and MasterCard), and the Issuer Processor (such as the customer’s bank). Once the verification passes through and back to the gateway, Pay will again get to work and redirect the customer back to the CivicPlus solution with either an approval or denial of the transaction.
Pay has no UI (user interface) that the user sees. They are directed from the CivicPlus solution to the payment gateway hosted form, and back again. Having CivicPlus Pay in the middle ensures that card data never flows through or is stored in the CivicPlus solution. This is important to maintaining PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance for both us and the customer.
e-Commerce Transactions
e-Commerce transactions are also known as card-not-present transactions. This means that the payment details were not collected from the physical card in person. In a card-not-present transaction, CivicPlus Pay is the intermediary that connects CivicPlus products to payment gateways by acting as a switchboard. When you implement Pay, you will configure your gateway for taking payments and typically will generate API credentials. The credentials are stored securely in Pay.
When a user goes to checkout, CivicPlus Pay will look up which gateway is in use and the API credentials. Pay then generates the session and connects the user to the gateway. The user is then redirected away from CivicPlus systems and lands on a page hosted by the gateway.
The user then enters their payment details onto this page. The gateway tells Pay whether the transaction was successful. Pay then re-directs the user back to where they started.
Retail Transactions
Retail transactions are known as card-present transactions. These types of transactions occur when a payment is taken in person using a payment terminal, such as a PIN pad or EMV device.
In the flow of a card-present transaction, a transaction is initiated by asking CivicPlus Pay to start a transaction. Pay then communications to a tray application. A tray application sits between the PIN pad/EMV device and the gateway. It is a listener application that is installed on your computer. Sometimes a gateway has its own tray application. In other instances, you will need to use the CivicPlus Pay Tray Application.
Once the tray application has been notified to start the transaction, it communicates to the PIN-pad device. Often, it prompts the user to insert, swipe, or tap their card. Once the user is done entering their payment, the device notifies the tray application which will then send the payment information to the gateway.
Once the gateway has processed the payment (both successful and declined payments) the result is returned back to the tray application which then notifies CivicPlus Pay.
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