Payments: A Conceptual Guide to the Kibo Commerce Financial Core
1. Strategic Overview
Concept Definition: Payments in Kibo Commerce represents the foundational platform capabilities and integrated processes for securely accepting, authorizing, capturing, crediting, and refunding monetary transactions across all sales channels. Business Context: The platform’s payment framework is an agile, API-driven solution positioned as the central financial core for enterprise e-commerce operations, ensuring secure, compliant, and channel-agnostic transaction management to drive a unified commerce experience. Value Drivers:- Increased Revenue Velocity: Support for a diverse array of configurable payment types, including credit cards, digital wallets, and alternative methods, removes checkout friction and broadens market reach, designed to increase customer conversion.
- Optimized Working Capital: Flexible authorization and capture settings, align fund collection with fulfillment activities, which is designed to improve cash flow and mitigate financial risk associated with order changes.
- Reduced Compliance and Security Risk: Integration with specialized payment gateways and built-in tokenization features protect sensitive customer data and help maintain adherence to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS), securing the overall transaction ecosystem.
2. Core Concepts Explained
What is Payments? Payments is the core subsystem within the Kibo Commerce platform responsible for managing the lifecycle of a financial transaction from the customer’s intent to pay through to the final settlement or refund. It serves as the secure layer between the storefront, the Order Management System (OMS), and external Payment Gateways (which handle the secure authorization and money movement). Each step in the transaction is recorded as a detailed Payment Interaction to maintain a comprehensive audit trail and status history, which is fundamental to financial reconciliation.- Authorization: The initial process where the payment gateway confirms the availability of funds and reserves the required amount on the customer’s account.
- Capture (Redeem): The process of transferring the reserved funds from the customer’s account to the merchant’s account; for gift cards, this action is referred to as redeem.
- Void: The cancellation of a payment that has been Authorized but not Captured. It releases the reserved funds back to the customer.
- Credit/Refund: The process of returning captured funds to the customer.
- Operational Benefits: The system provides flexibility by allowing merchants to define the precise timing of fund capture (e.g., authorizing at order submit and capture at shipment fulfillment), which is essential for complex omnichannel and distributed fulfillment models, such as back-ordered items or ship-from-store. This prevents customer chargebacks due to premature billing.
- Financial Benefits: By supporting multiple payment types and enabling payment ranking, the system can be configured to minimize payment failure rates and maximize the success of capture and refund operations, directly protecting profit margins. Furthermore, the use of payment tokenization allows for secure storage of customer payment details, promoting repeat purchases without increasing the merchant’s PCI compliance scope.
- Customer Experience Benefits: Offering a wide, configurable array of payment methods, including digital wallets, B2B-specific options like Purchase Orders, and store credit/gift cards, provides a frictionless, personalized, and convenient checkout experience, which is designed to improve customer satisfaction and reduce cart abandonment.
3. Functional Components & Configuration Deep Dive
Component Architecture
The Payment subsystem is composed of a tightly integrated set of components that manage the transaction lifecycle:- Payment Gateway Service: The configured external service connection responsible for secure transaction processing.
- Functionality: Handles authorization, capture, credit, and void interactions with financial institutions.
- Payment Types: Defines the acceptable payment instruments.
- Support for Credit Cards: Allows for various card types (e.g., Visa, Mastercard) assigned to a gateway.
- Support for Digital Wallets: Integration with external providers like PayPal, Apple Pay, etc.
- Support for Gift Cards and Store Credit: Includes both external (Gateway) and internal (Platform) gift cards.
- Support for Purchase Orders: A dedicated B2B credit-based payment method.
- Payment Interactions: The chronological, auditable log of all actions (Authorize, Capture, Void, Credit, Decline) performed on a payment.
- Purpose: Tracks the payment’s Payment State (e.g., Authorized, Captured, Voided) and history for reconciliation.
- Security and Compliance: Mechanisms ensuring data protection.
- Functionality: Tokenization of payment data to protect sensitive information and adherence to industry security standards.
- Payment Ranking and Auto Capture Settings: Business rules for prioritizing and timing financial actions.
- Purpose: Govern the sequence in which the system executes captures and refunds on multiple payment types for a single order.
Configuration-Level Deep Dive
| Configuration Name | Business Purpose | Impact and Trade-offs | Concrete Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Payment Gateway | Defines the unique connection credentials for a specific external processor (e.g., a specific instance of Cybersource). | Choosing an industry-leading gateway like Cybersource provides comprehensive fraud management tools and support for various tokenized transactions, | An Enterprise Electronics Retailer configures a Cybersource instance with specific credentials to handle all Visa and Mastercard transactions. |
| Payment Type (e.g., Visa, Check by Mail, Purchase Order) | Enables or disables a specific payment type offered to the customer on a per-site basis. | Enabling new payment types expands customer options but requires corresponding fulfillment or reconciliation processes to be established. | A DTC Brand enables “PayPal Express” as a Payment Type to allow customers to check out directly from the cart page. |
| Payment Type: Order Processing Behavior | Controls whether authorization and capture occur simultaneously or as separate steps during the order process. | Setting this to Authorize and Capture on Order Placement risks customer dissatisfaction and potential chargebacks if the order is delayed or cancelled after funds are collected. Separating them (Capture on Order Shipment) reduces this risk and improves the customer experience by ensuring funds are collected only when goods are ready. | A Fashion & Apparel Retailer sets this to Authorize and Capture on Order Placement but immediately faces customer frustration when an item is back-ordered and the customer’s funds were collected well before fulfillment. |
| Auto Capture Toggle (General) | A global site setting that enables the system to automatically trigger the capture of authorized funds based on fulfillment events. | Enabling this automates revenue collection and is vital for scaling high-volume operations, but requires rigorous, accurate fulfillment status updates from the OMS. | A Marketplace Operator enables Auto Capture across all credit card payments to ensure timely revenue collection as soon as their vendors fulfill a shipment. |
| Flexible Auto Capture Settings (Shipment State/Workflow) | Allows the merchant to select a specific, granular Shipment State (e.g., Customer Picked Up or In Transit) as the definitive trigger for payment capture. | This granular control is vital for omnichannel scenarios. Setting the trigger too early creates friction; setting it at the final step (e.g., Shipped) optimizes financial timing. | For a “Click & Collect” flow, the capture is set to trigger only when the shipment status changes to Customer Picked Up in the Fulfiller UI. |
| Payment Ranking (Capture) | Prioritizes the sequence in which multiple payment methods (e.g., Gift Card and Credit Card) are drawn down to cover the order total. | Higher-ranked methods are targeted first for capture, allowing merchants to enforce business logic, such as always depleting store credit before charging external payment accounts. | The retailer sets the Capture Ranking as “Store Credit, Visa,” ensuring that the customer’s internal credit balance is always fully utilized before any charge is made against their credit card. |
| Purchase Order: Credit Limit (Customer Account Setting) | The maximum total monetary credit amount a specific customer is permitted to spend using the Purchase Order payment method. | Setting a limit manages financial risk for the merchant. The available balance increases when the customer pays an outstanding PO. | The B2B account for a university department is assigned a Credit Limit of $75,000 for all Purchase Order transactions on the site. |
4. Key Capabilities and Business Applications
Capability: Manual Capture
Functional Explanation: Manual Capture is the direct merchant intervention to initiate the collection of funds after an initial Authorization has been successfully performed. While Auto Capture automates this, Manual Capture provides granular control in scenarios where the fulfillment process is handled externally or requires special validation. Merchants can manually capture the full authorized amount or a partial amount through the Admin UI or API, provided the capture occurs before the authorization expires. Business Application Example:- Industry: B2B Industrial Distributor (Complex pricing, client accounts, bulk ordering)
- Scenario: A client places a large, complex order for custom-cut materials using a credit card. Due to the custom nature, the final quantity and price are adjusted only after the items are physically fabricated, days after the initial order and authorization. The distributor has disabled auto-capture for this product line. A customer service representative (CSR) later uses Manual Capture to charge the customer the precise, final, lower-than-authorized amount for the fabricated material, avoiding the need for a separate refund process and resulting in accurate initial billing and a better customer experience.
Capability: Auto Capture
Functional Explanation: Auto Capture is a site-level configuration that automates the process of converting a payment Authorization (reserved funds) into a Capture (collected funds). Auto capture can be configured to capture on a specific shipment step or status, capture the order total when the first shipment on the order is fulfilled or force a capture on a specific day. When enabled, the system automatically checks for and initiates the capture action based on the configured Order Processing Behavior or Flexible Auto Capture Settings (typically tied to a shipment’s fulfillment status). This eliminates the need for manual intervention by a CSR or system user to collect payment after the authorization is in place, reducing the administrative overhead associated with payment reconciliation. Business Application Example:- Industry: Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Brand (Subscription models, customer acquisition focus)
- Scenario: A DTC brand experiences high order volume and uses a complex, distributed fulfillment network with multiple warehouses. To maintain efficiency and ensure timely revenue recognition, the brand enables Auto Capture with the trigger set to the “Fulfilled” shipment state. As each order portion is packaged and shipped from the respective warehouse, the OMS automatically updates the shipment status, which triggers the platform to charge the customer’s credit card for the exact value of the shipped items. This automation ensures revenue collection is synchronized with product shipment across the distributed network, resulting in significant time savings for the finance and order management teams.
Capability: Payment Extensibility
Functional Explanation: Payment Extensibility is a core platform feature that leverages the Kibo Commerce developer framework, allowing merchants to implement a custom payment gateway that is not supported natively out-of-the-box. This is achieved by creating an application in the Dev Center, configuring it as a gateway adapter, and then installing that application in the tenant. This framework allows the merchant to define the logic for essential payment interactions—such as authorization, capture, and credit—to communicate with a specific, external third-party payment processor or system. Business Application Example:- Industry: Marketplace Operator (Multi-vendor management, compliance)
- Scenario: The marketplace operator has an existing, preferred relationship with a financial services provider whose payment gateway is not one of Kibo Commerce’s Out-of-the-Box (OOB) integrations. The operator uses Payment Extensibility to build a custom gateway adapter application that facilitates communication between the Kibo platform and their preferred third-party gateway. This allows the operator to maintain their existing financial infrastructure and negotiated processing rates while leveraging the Kibo Commerce platform, resulting in seamless financial continuity and reduced integration switching costs.
Capability: Purchase Order (PO) Payment Method
Functional Explanation: The Purchase Order payment type is a B2B-focused feature that allows an authorized corporate customer to pay for goods using a formal, pre-approved PO Number against a configurable Credit Limit. This is a site- and customer-specific setting. The system tracks the customer’s available credit. The PO payment is typically authorized instantly against the customer’s available credit. Business Application Example:- Industry: B2B Industrial Distributor (Complex pricing, client accounts, bulk ordering)
- Scenario: A purchasing manager for a large manufacturing firm needs to place a time-sensitive, $30,000 order for spare parts. The customer’s account is pre-configured with a $50,000 credit limit and the PO payment type is enabled. The manager selects Purchase Order at checkout, enters the required PO number and the system authorizes the payment instantly against the remaining credit. This capability eliminates the delay of invoicing and payment negotiation for established clients, resulting in a significantly faster order-to-delivery cycle.
Capability: Automatic and Manual Refunds
Functional Explanation: The platform provides two distinct methods for returning funds to the customer: Automatic Refunds and Manual Refunds.- Automatic Refunds: These are system-triggered actions, typically initiated when a return is successfully processed and accepted within the Order Management System (OMS). The system determines which payment method to credit first based on the configured Payment Ranking for refunds, ensuring a consistent and automated financial reconciliation process.
- Manual Refunds: These are initiated directly by a business user, such as a Customer Service Representative (CSR), through the Admin UI. A CSR has the flexibility to select the specific, preferred payment type to refund on
- Industry: Fashion & Apparel Retailer (Omnichannel, seasonal, complex sizing)
- Scenario: A customer returns a high-cost dress that was purchased using a credit card and a small amount of promotional Store Credit. To manage the high volume of standard returns, the retailer relies on Automatic Refunds to credit the customer’s credit card instantly upon verification of the returned item. However, in a scenario where the customer paid with two credit cards, a CSR can perform a Manual Refund to split the refunded amount between the two cards exactly as requested by the customer. This flexibility ensures efficiency for standard returns while allowing customer-centric adjustments for unique financial situations, resulting in high customer satisfaction and minimal manual financial adjustments.
5. Platform Integration Map
| Direction | Component | Description and Combined Value |
|---|---|---|
| Upstream Dependencies | Order Creation/Checkout | The checkout process is the primary input, providing the payment details, payment type selection, and the authorization request amount. This is the prerequisite for all subsequent payment actions. |
| Customer Accounts | Required for securely storing Saved Payment Methods (tokens) and to apply customer-specific financial rules, such as the Credit Limit for Purchase Orders. | |
| Promotions/Discounts | The final, net order total after all discounts are applied is the exact monetary value that the Payments system must authorize and capture, ensuring billing accuracy. | |
| Downstream Impacts | Order Management System (OMS) | The OMS relies on the payment’s current state (Authorized or Captured) to trigger and advance fulfillment workflows (e.g., fulfilling a shipment). The OMS also triggers the final capture based on its shipment status. |
| Synergistic Features | API Extensions | The core feature enables Payment Extensibility by providing the mechanism to build and deploy custom gateway adapters, allowing the platform to connect to any required external payment service. |
| Fraud Checking Applications | These third-party services can be integrated (often via API Extensions) to analyze the payment and order details before the Authorization interaction is sent, mitigating risk and reducing payment processor fees associated with declined transactions. |
6. Related Conceptual Guides
For foundational knowledge, refer to:- Fulfillment: This guide explains the order and shipment life cycles, which are the direct system triggers for payment capture and important for utilizing Flexible Auto Capture.
- Customer API: This guide details how customer records are managed, which is a prerequisite for saving payment methods and enabling B2B credit-based features like the Purchase Order Credit Limit.
- Returns and Reverse Logistics: This guide details the process for returning funds and managing customer monetary adjustments, which is directly affected by the configured Payment Ranking and the original payment method’s disposition.
- API Extensions: This guide explains the development framework that enables Payment Extensibility, detailing how the two concepts work together to achieve greater business goals like connecting to localized or specialized payment gateways.
- Payment Gateway Settings: This guide provides detailed instructions on the configuration, credential management, and supported providers for external payment processors that authorize and capture funds.
- Payment Type Settings: This guide covers the process for enabling specific payment methods (like credit cards, checks, or digital wallets) on a per-site basis and assigning them to a configured payment gateway.
- Auto Capture Settings: This guide details the configuration of the general Auto Capture toggle, the definition of the capture event trigger, and the use of the Flexible Auto Capture Settings tied to shipment states.