Changing Credit Card Provider

Before changing the merchant provider for a credit card payment method, please about

Generally there are two aproaches:

  • Create new credit card payment methods for the new merchant provider and migrate all post dated and recurring donation payments to the new provider. This is the best choice because
    • It preserves history of which merchant did which payment
    • Allows you to reactivate old merchant account if you need to do linked refunds for past payments (such as occurred during Covid and mass cancellations, but could just as easily occur for a cancelled concert at any time
    • It sets up future post dated credit card payments to use the new merchant
  • Move all existing and historical credit card payment methods to the new provider so that they no longer exist under the old provider. This is rarely used:
    • It sets up future post dated credit card payments to use the new merchant
    • All historical data is also migrated, so future linked credit card refunds will not work, since they are for the incorrect merchant provider.

Impact on Merchant Profiles

In both cases, moving to a new merchant provider means any Merchant Profiles established for patrons will become useless.

The patron merchant profiles will be recreated under the new merchant account as each patron purchases in the future. They cannot be transferred from one merchant provider to another.

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