Working with Payment Cards in SAP

Payment Card is used for cash-free payment used in variety of business transactions, from buying goods at local store to procuring goods and services on behalf of company. Payment Cards are nowadays indispensable to customers and an important mode of payment for business. Payment Card processing in SAP system offers a wide range of functions in Sales & Distribution, integration of payment card activities into sales, delivery & billing. Exchange of information with clearing houses for authorization can be set up during sales processing.

In Sales & Distribution, Payment card is entered in sales order and used throughout cycle.

Main payment cards categories used in system are:

• Credit Cards: Used for purchasing with regular billing & extended credit.
• Customer Cards: Used to buy goods from specific merchant or group of merchants.
• Debit Cards: Used to purchase with direct debit from bank account.
• Procurement Cards: Issued on behalf of companies to employees for purchasing items up to a given amount.

In Sales order system provides option of entering one payment card for entire amount or using multiple cards to split amount value in case of credit limit being reached on single card. System has checks to ensure that card entered corresponds to numbering system of card company. System also checks for expiration date and issues warning for near term expiring cards. A message is issued when authorization of card is successful, on failure order is blocked.

Delivery document does not carry any card information directly. System does check following information in delivery relevant to payment cards. All expired authorizations are detected and reauthorized. Any changes to delivery quantity are covered by authorizations that were granted in sales order. In case authorizations are not valid anymore, system sets the status in Sales order for delivery as ‘Not Approved’.

Payment Card attached to Billing header in billing document contains items with detailed card information. System copies this information from Sales Order and determines. Cards to be billed from payment card plan. The order in which they are to be billed. Billing amounts on each card in case of multiple cards. On release of billing document to Accounting, payment card data , billing amount & authorization information is copied on to accounting document for settlement.

Payment card interface acts as a bridge between SAP system and financial institution’s software. Interface system has supports following features:

• Converting data from SAP system to financial institution’s structure.
• Communication protocols between payment card application server and financial institution.
• Converting data from financial institution’s structure to SAP system structure.
• Time out scenarios etc.

All major clearing houses and financial institutions are covered for transmitting card data.

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