Suggestions for "up-charging" customers?

[gacluthefr]

My company currently uses the AIM API for eCommerce transactions.  While it is clear we could further integrate the Credit and Refund APIs (via a customer service portal), the approach for "up-charges" is not so clear.

After the initial ecommerce transaction, customers will frequently call and request changes to their order, which can result in a higher price.  Currently, we go through the Auth.Net website to make these changes manually (via Finance team).

We would like to add an "up-charge" function to our customer service portal that would allow the customer service representative to increase the credit card charges, *without* asking the customer for their credit card number.  We also do not want to store credit card numbers locally in any way or have direct access to them.

An Auth.Net rep said we could integrate CIM...but the process is not entirely clear.  When using CIM, do customers need to explicitly agree to allow credit card information to be saved for later?

What suggestions do you have for this situation?

We only need the ability to do upcharges within 10-15 days of the original order.

Thank you

[gacluthefr]

My company currently uses the AIM API for eCommerce transactions.  While it is clear we could further integrate the Credit and Refund APIs (via a customer service portal), the approach for "up-charges" is not so clear.

After the initial ecommerce transaction, customers will frequently call and request changes to their order, which can result in a higher price.  Currently, we go through the Auth.Net website to make these changes manually (via Finance team).

We would like to add an "up-charge" function to our customer service portal that would allow the customer service representative to increase the credit card charges, *without* asking the customer for their credit card number.  We also do not want to store credit card numbers locally in any way or have direct access to them.

An Auth.Net rep said we could integrate CIM...but the process is not entirely clear.  When using CIM, do customers need to explicitly agree to allow credit card information to be saved for later?

What suggestions do you have for this situation?

We only need the ability to do upcharges within 10-15 days of the original order.

Thank you

[TJPride]

It's probably good form to tell them if you're the one doing the storage, but if you offload the storage to Authorize.net, telling them about that probably isn't necessary. The storage is effectively one-way, since even if someone breaks into your site and acquires your login ID and key, they can't get credit card details back out - the only way to do that is to log into your control panel and submit a ticket asking for a manual data dump. As long as profiles are deleted within a reasonable period of time, I'd say you're good to go.

Of course, that's regular CIM, where the credit card data is collected on your site and passed to Authorize.net internally (similar to AIM). If you intend to use hosted CIM, then the forms Authorize.net supplies are what they are, and it'll be fairly obvious to most people that their credit card details are being stored.