Raven Integration
Raven consists of a tightly integrated suite of applications and programming interfaces that provide payment solutions for the key business processes of international and domestic online merchants.
Processing Options
No matter what sales channels you use, you will need to accept orders and payments, make fulfillment decisions, provide refunds and have access to the statements and reports that are the foundation of financial and operational control of your business. RAVEN provides you with the tools you need to address these processes, typically giving you a choice of several approaches for each one.
The following table outlines the tools RAVEN provides for key business processes:
| Business Process | Raven Support |
|---|---|
| Take Order / Process debit | Hosted Payment Page (HPP): The hosted payment page can be easily integrated with an eCommerce site, right down to adopting the look and feel. The HPP is a good fit for merchants who want a simple integration method and would prefer to avoid costly and complex PCI compliance efforts. With the HPP, sensitive cardholder data never passes through the merchant’s site. Rather, details of the sale are routed to the HPP and the HPP returns with the results of the sale and a tracking number Using this tracking number, the merchant can initiate a further sale or refund a sale, all without needing to store any cardholder data. See Market Direct. |
| RAVEN API (RAPI): The RAVEN API can be used to initiate all payment types, such as card payments, cheque issue requests or one of the various electronic transfers supported by RAVEN. It can be used as part of a desktop application or be integrated into a website. It also allows complete control of the look and feel of applications in which it is used. Because the API is used to communicate the details of cardholder data from the merchant to RAVEN, the merchant’s system will be brought into scope for PCI compliance concerns. See Real-time Processing and the API Guide. | |
| RAVEN Batch file uploaded using a webfolder or RAVEN Online: The simplest way to submit payments to RAVEN is by creating a batch file using a spreadsheet or other editor. It is then a simple matter of uploading the batch file using a webfolder or RAVEN Online. See Batch Processing, File Types and File Exchange. | |
| Raven Virtual Terminal: The Raven virtual terminal may be used to capture sales from any browser. | |
| Fraud Scoring / Review flagged items | Raven Online: Assuming enough information is provided, RAVEN has the ability to automatically calculate and return a fraud score. At a minimum, the request must include the IP address and the customer’s billing address. The Hosted Payment Page can be configured to collect this information. If you are using the API, your site must collect and supply this data. Flagged items may be reviewed and released using RAVEN Online. If flagged items are not manually released, the payments will eventually be voided. |
| Fulfillment | Automated HTTP POST or Email from RAVEN when using Hosted Payment Page: The Hosted Payment Page can be configured to post a fulfillment request or to send an email to your fulfillment centre with each successful sale. See Market Direct. |
| Refunds / Process credits | RAVEN API: Just as it can be used to capture any sale, the API may be used to submit refunds and credits of any kind. See Real-time processing and the API Guide. |
| RAVEN Batch file uploaded using a webfolder or RAVEN Online: Batch files are a very simple way to initiate credits or refunds, especially if you are making a large number of payouts. See Batch processing, File Types and File Exchange. | |
| RAVEN Virtual Terminal: The virtual terminal may be used for credit card refunds and issuing cheque refunds. | |
| Statements | RAVEN Online: RAVEN online provides access to a comprehensive range of statements that show activity on your account. View a variety of reports, including days on which there has been activity, detailed or summary reports, an aggregate report showing activity across a longer period of time or export statement information in a variety of formats. |
| Email: It is also possible to have pdf summary statements emailed directly to you. | |
| Result Reports | RAVEN Online: RAVEN online provides current and historic access to processing results as well as returned item and chargeback reports. |
| Web-folder: Results of processing as well as any returned item or chargeback reports will also be deposited into your web folder. | |
| Reporting | RAVEN Online: Ad-hoc reports are easily run using RAVEN Online. |
Selecting the Best Options for Your Business
The exact mix of techniques you will use to manage your payment flow will depend on industry and preference, however, we have outlined a few common scenarios:
eCommerce Merchant 1
An online merchant without a large investment in a shopping cart, payment page or fulfillment mechanism. For this type of merchant a selection of services would include:
- Accept orders using the Hosted Payment Page. This means an easy iteration and will sidestep any PCI compliance efforts.
- Transmit fulfillment messages for the HPP
- Review flagged items in RAVEN Online
- View daily statements using RAVEN Online
- Refund to cards using the Virtual Terminal
- Process chargebacks from RAVEN Online
- Perform ad-hoc reporting using RAVEN Online
The reliance on the Hosted Payment Page and RAVEN Online means there will be a quick integration phase, and since all key business processes are covered right away there will be no need for any PCI compliance efforts.
Incentive Payment Manager
Incentive managers typically deal exclusively in payouts, so no order taking is involved in the process. They will also typically have processes in place that trigger a batch of payments to be sent. In this case, the following mix of services would be appropriate:
- Use batch files and a webfolder to submit payment requests. The batch files have a very simple syntax that can be generated directly from database scripts or by massaging data in Excel. Webfolders lend themselves to easy manual or automated uploads.
- Use the reports placed into the webfolder to confirm execution of the pay-out requests.
- Use RAVEN Online to check funding of your account and provide financial controls.
- Export from RAVEN Online to create files used for accounting reconciliation.
- Access statements via email or through RAVEN Online
The use of a webfolder and batch files means there is almost no integration phase, some clients have integrated in as little as a few hours using this mechanism. Since there is no need for real-time processing ,no complicated integration is required.
eCommerce Merchant 2
An online merchant with a considerable investment in a shopping cart, payment page and possibly a fulfillment mechanism. They wish to integrate to RAVEN without disturbing their existing processes. A logical selection of services would include:
- Accept orders using the existing mechanism and then integrate to RAVEN by an API call
- View daily statements using RAVEN Online or via email
- Refund to cards as a result of an API call
- Collect chargeback information from a webfolder programatically
- Perform ad-hoc reporting using RAVEN Online
In this case there is very little reliance on the RAVEN tools; the emphasis is instead on a seamless integration with the existing merchant systems.