Method Community

I have a question regarding storing credit cards in Method.  We do monthly billings to our customers, some that are flat rate over a twelve month period, and others varying amounts from month to month.  I have set up a payment gateway through Authroize.net.  I am also syncing with Quickbooks, but do not use the Intuit credit card gateway.  I am currently researching the best way to store credit card numbers, so that I don't have to enter the number, and expiration for every month. I put in some credit card numbers under the customer account, but when I went to receive payments it does not pull the credit card number for the payment.  Do I need to store it elsewhere or process a payment in a different manner?  

Hi David,

I am going to look into your post here about storing credit card numbers, please give me some time to do some testing to see what options might be available to you.

One question though, are you using a QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop account, there could be subtle differences between the two, so it would help me for testing to know which version you are using.  You mentioned that you put some credit card numbers from the Customer Account, did you do this in Method or QuickBooks, if Method then that would mean you are using a QuickBooks Desktop account.

-Ben 

I am using Quickbooks Desktop.  I put the credit card number in Method.  It does pull the cardholder name , street address, and zip fields after I select a payment gateway, but not the credit card number and expiration.  

Hi David,

As you have probably already noticed, Method currently handles Credit Card data in a slightly different manner than other fields from QuickBooks.  Currently, if you store a Credit Card in Method under Customer->Edit Customer->Payment and Info, the credit card information will get synced over to QuickBooks, once it is in QuickBooks, the card number in record appears something like this: XXXXXXXXXXXX5544.  Method doesn't actually store any Credit Card information in our database, if a card number is entered into Method, then it will sync to QuickBooks, then be encrypted as described above.

Our development team is currently working on using/adding "Authentication Tokens" to our system. Through adding this functionality, we will be able to pass payment requests on behalf of our Customers directly to the Merchants, without the need to store this info in the Method database.  I don't want to get too deep in this explanation of Authentication Tokens, however I wanted to bring it up because once this has been added to Method, our payments process will change slightly, and will likely work better for what you are trying to accomplish.

At this time, Method doesn't recommend or condone storing Customer Credit Card information in our database, we also wouldn't be able to provide any support/help in doing this.  With our current setup, you will have to unfortunately continue to manually input this information into the receive payments section each time.  We apologize if the way Method currently handles Credit Cards is causing you some issues with your businesses processes.  Hopefully ,once we do get the Authorization Tokens functioning in our system, this will allow you to accomplish what you are looking for.

-Ben

Hi Ben,

Do you have a rough idea of when the Authentication Tokens feature will be implemented?

Hi Matt,

Sorry, I haven't been given a timeframe for adding the security tokens, my understanding is that it will be available with Method V2, however I will have to get confirmation on this.  Let me get back to you.

-Ben