Pay Methods

In WHMCS, a Pay Method is a method of payment that belongs to a client. A Pay Method can represent a credit card or a bank account.

Clients can choose any of their available Pay Methods during checkout for new orders and for payment of invoices. Each Pay Method can also have a different associated billing address.

Default Pay Method

Clients must always have a default Pay Method. This is the Pay Method that all new automatic recurring payment attempts use by default.

In certain conditions, the default Pay Method may not be usable for a given invoice (for example, when the default Pay Method is tokenized with a specific payment gateway and the invoice's payment method is a different gateway). If this occurs, the system uses the first applicable Pay Method for the user in the displayed order.

Changing the default Pay Method will not change the Pay Method that existing unpaid invoices use.

You cannot set a different default Pay Method on a per-service basis.

Managing Pay Methods

Admin Area

You can manage client pay methods from the Summary tab of the client profile.

Client Area

Clients can view and manage Pay Methods at Billing > Payment Methods in the Client Area.

Clients can view all of their saved Pay Methods, update their descriptions and expiry dates, delete them (if you enable this) and change the default Pay Method for automated recurring payment attempts.

If you use a mix of both tokenized and non-tokenized payment gateways, customers can choose the desired payment method when adding one via the Client Area. This determines whether to store the card locally encrypted in the WHMCS database or remotely with the tokenized payment gateway.

Processing Payments

The system will attempt automated recurring charges for capture automatically using the default Pay Method for a given client.

If no Pay Methods exist for a client, the client will receive an email informing them that the system could not attempt an automated payment and that they must log in and pay the invoice manually.

To use a different card, clients can log in and pay an unpaid invoice manually at any time via the Client Area.

Admins can also attempt to capture payment at any time using any stored Pay Method. To do this:

1. Go to the desired invoice in the Admin Area.
2. Click Attempt Capture. If Attempt Capture does not appear or is disabled, check the invoice's assigned Payment Method in the Options tab.
3. Choose the desired Pay Method to use.
4. Optionally, enter the CVV number for the card.
5. Click Attempt Capture to attempt the payment.

Related Settings

The Allow Client Pay Method Removal, Delete Encrypted Credit Card Data, and Delete Encrypted Bank Account Data settings affect the behaviour of Pay Method functionality.

You can configure these settings in the Security tab at Configuration () > System Settings > General Settings or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > General Settings.