Pay Methods
Contents
Introduction
In WHMCS, a Pay Method is a method of payment belonging to a client. A Pay Method can represent a credit card or a bank account and a client can have multiple Pay Methods associated with their account.
Clients can choose any of their available Pay Methods during checkout both for new orders and payment of invoices.
Each Pay Method can also have a different billing address associated with it if required.
Default Pay Method
There must always be a default Pay Method and this is the Pay Method that is used by default for all automatic recurring payment attempts.
In certain conditions, the default Pay Method may not be applicable 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. In this scenario, the first applicable Pay Method for the user in order of display is used.
Managing Pay Methods
Admin Area
A Clients' Pay Methods can be managed via a dedicated panel on the Client Summary page within the Admin Area.
For more information, see Clients:Summary Tab.
Client Area
Clients can view and manage Pay Methods via the "Payment Methods" page accessible from the Billing and Account sub-menus within the Client Area.
Clients can view all of their saved Pay Methods, edit (update descriptions and expiry date), delete (if enabled) and change the default Pay Method used for automated recurring payment attempts.
If you have multiple Payment Gateways active, including a mix of both Tokenized and non-tokenized Payment Gateways, customers will be presented with the option to choose the desired Payment Method when adding a Pay Method via the Client Area. This is essential for knowing whether the card should be stored locally encrypted in the WHMCS database, or remotely with the Tokenized Payment Gateway. If you do not wish to allow customers to store cards locally, please refer to the Enforcing Tokenization section below.
Processing Payments
Automated recurring charges will be attempted 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 an automated payment could not be attempted and that they must login and pay the invoice manually.
To use a different card, client can login and pay an unpaid invoice manually at any time via the Client Area.
Admin Area users can also attempt a capture at any time using any stored Pay Method. To do this, navigate to the desired invoice within the Admin Area and click the Attempt Capture button. If this button does not appear or is disabled, check the Payment Method that the invoice is assigned to via the Options tab.
Upon clicking the Attempt Capture button, a popup window will appear allowing you to choose the desired Pay Method to be used. Select the desired entry, optionally enter the CVV number for the card if available, and then click the Attempt Capture button 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.