Using CIM with Extended Credit Capabilities to credit other merchants?

[arkboynko1]

I think I'm on the right track on this but I'm concerned that what I'm seeing in the developer sandbox won't be true in production.

I'm helping design a website that will essentially be a reseller and marketer of gift cards for many businesses.

We get businesses to register with us, provide their bank account and routing number, and we store them as tokens using CIM.

Once we sell a gift card (processing a consumer credit card for the purchase on our site), I'd like to immediately credit the underlying merchant using CIM.

So we use CIM to process the consumer's credit card, and then turn around and use CIM again to credit the merchant's bank account (minus our commission of course).

Is this possible?  I know with Extended Credit Capabilities (ECC) you can credit bank accounts and credit cards without linking to a previous transaction.

We would be fine to accept the risks associated with enabling this.

Thanks in advance.

[RaynorC1emen7]

Short answer no.

http://community.developer.authorize.net/t5/Affiliate-Program/Transfer-payment-details/m-p/18382#M80

[arkboynko1]

Thanks for the reply.

I think the thread you linked is a different scenario.  We are not interested in passing payment details to our merchants.

We simply want to credit their bank accounts when we sell something on their behalf.

It is obvious that Authorize.Net enables us to receive payments, we just want to be able to send payments out too.

Thanks in advance for any other replies.

[RaynorC1emen7]

Oops. I thought it said money transfer. But to your question is still no.

http://community.developer.authorize.net/t5/Integration-and-Testing/Question-about-payments-and-tran...

[arkboynko1]

OK thanks again.

I'm confused as to why Extended Credit Capabilities exists then.  Why would this feature be available if we are unable to issue credits to customer's tokenized bank accounts as needed using CIM?

Also, why would it work in the developer sandbox if it can't be enabled in production?

[RaynorC1emen7]

If I remember it correctly, a credit transaction can happen for up to 60days after the initial capture transaction. After that is unlinked-credit.

While technical it is possible for what you are doing. Your merchant account provider might ban/lock your account for using it that way. When you signup for your merchant account, they should have the legal mumbo jumbo stating what you can and cannot do.

[arkboynko1]

Interesting.

So it really falls on our banking institution and what they will allow from our merchant account.  This is making some sense to me.

If we could get this to work it would be ideal.  My primary reason is PCI compliance.  I don't want to store the bank information of the merchants we need to credit.  If we are able to initiate the credits through CIM it solves this big issue.

I wonder if we got approval from our bank if this could work.

Obviously Authorize.Net is able to process unlinked refunds through CIM as long as ECC is enabled on the account.

Although, the documentation for ECC states you must use AIM.  Is CIM an extension (built on top) of AIM?

[RaynorC1emen7]

Documentaion for the CIM said it do allow unlinked-credit.

[TJPride]

Documentation also said it was for refunds not associated with transactions. It's not supposed to be used for money transfers. If you want to do money transfers, I suggest you contact your bank and find out which branches offer money transfers and can help you with ACH certification or whatever. They can probably point you in the right direction for finding a service to do this. I don't think Authorize.net is it.