E-Commerce with PayPal Payflow Link

Polaris supports PayPal’s Payflow Link payment gateway for credit card payments from Polaris PowerPAC and Mobile PAC. The Payflow Link gateway is a “redirect and postback” method of providing credit card payments from Polaris PAC applications. An advantage of this method is that much of the responsibility of PCI compliance falls to the gateway, which handles authorization requirements, rather than the library. No credit card information is stored in the Polaris database when payment is made through the Payflow Link hosted payments site. For more information about the Payflow Link gateway, see
https://merchant.paypal.com/cgi-bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=merchant/payment_gateway

Important:
PayPal supports TLS 1.0. If Payflow link is attempting to post back to the Polaris PAC site, it will fail if the server has been configured to allow TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2 connections (TLS 1.0 has been disabled)

The logged-on PAC user selects the charges to pay and clicks Pay Fines Now. When the user clicks Pay Fines Now, the Payflow Link checkout page opens. After the credit card payment transaction has been set up and finalized, the user clicks a link to return to the Fines & Fees page in the Polaris patron account. Payflow Link sends an e-mail receipt for the payment to the user’s e-mail address specified on the Hosted Checkout page. Similar processing is available for donations.

The Polaris e-commerce licenses for Polaris PowerPAC and Mobile PAC (if your system includes Mobile PAC) are required to use this feature. For fine payments, both the PAC connection branch and the patron’s registered branch must support credit card processing. The patron’s registered branch settings determine the specific credit card processor and parameters. For donations, the selected recipient branch’s settings determine the specific credit card processor and parameters.

Payments from the staff client or from Polaris ExpressCheck are not supported.

Note:
When the payment processing gateway for the staff client log-in branch is Payflow Link, the Credit Card Payments Manager is not available from the Utilities menu. At branches where the Credit Card Payments Manager is accessible, store orders and store transactions do not appear for Payflow Link transactions.

Refunds

With the Payflow Link hosted gateway solution, refund transactions are not integrated in Polaris. Credit card refunds must be handled separately, both through Payflow Link and manually from the Polaris patron account in the Polaris staff client. For example, if a replacement charge has been paid via credit card, the refund must be issued manually from the Polaris patron account transaction summary and then again from Payflow Link. Work with Payflow Link to establish the appropriate staff accounts for handling refunds, then establish the refunds workflow with your staff. Do not allow staff to issue refunds to credit card payments from the Polaris patron account as cash or credit; instead, they must select Refund.

Note:
If a patron successfully pays by credit card using the Payflow Link web page and the transaction is voided because Polaris was unable to update the database, then no record of a payment is made in Polaris and the patron’s credit card payment will be voided by Payflow Link. If a staff member attempts to manually void a transaction using the PayPal manager, the void transaction is not reflected in Polaris.

Polaris also supports integrated credit card processing, such as PayPal’s Payflow Pro (see E-Commerce with PayPal® Payflow Pro®), which does offer credit card refunds from within Polaris. In systems where some sites use an integrated solution and others use a gateway solution such as Payflow Link, refunds can only be made in these circumstances:

The staff client log-on branch supports integrated payments and the Online Payments: Configure option in Polaris Administration (Credit Card parameters) is set to allow payments from the staff client for the integrated solution.
The original payment was made using the integrated solution and the Online Payments: Configure option is set to allow payments from the staff client for the integrated solution.

Otherwise, when an attempt is made to refund a credit card payment in Polaris, a message displays indicating that no refund transaction can be created. The credit card is not refunded and the patron account is left as is. This situation might occur if a consortium has implemented both integrated and hosted credit card payment solutions, or a library or consortium has changed from one solution to another and the refund is attempted after the change.

Lost Item Recovery

If a lost-and-paid item is recovered at check-in and the payment was made via credit card, and the library has set the lost-and-paid item recovery options to automatically credit the patron’s account, a “dummy” refund is created instead of a credit. The refund will appear as a refund in the Polaris patron account and a refund transaction created. This transaction is available for reporting in the Refunds to Credit Card Payments report. You can use the report to cross-check transactions logged in Payflow Link. (Note that the refund must also be made from Payflow Link.)

Instead of automatically crediting the patron’s account, you may want to set the lost-and-paid item recovery options to Leave as is. With this setting, the payments remain in the Polaris patron account and the refund or credit can be done from Payflow Link. Or your library may choose to disable all automatic recovery actions, requiring staff to create manual refunds when a lost-and-paid item is recovered. For more information about setting lost item recovery options, see Setting Lost Item Recovery Defaults.

Payflow Link Reports

Payflow Link offers transaction reports; for example:

Transaction Summary Report

Daily Activity Transaction Report - The transaction IDs match those stored in the ILSStoreTransactions.OrgID Polaris database table. Comment1 is the payment reason and transacting organization; Commnet2 is the Polaris store order ID and the patron barcode, if any.