U.S. Bank/UWM epayment Summary

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1 U.S. Bank/UWM epayment Summary Background UWM has contracted with U.S. Bank to provide epayment services, including real-time credit card processing and echeck transactions. U.S. Bank agreed to conduct a pilot project with the UWM Foundation. The pilot project consisted of building an online contributions form which would accept both credit cards and echecks. The details of this pilot project are outlined below: Pilot Project Details The U.S. Bank/UWM pilot project consisted of an online donation form for the UWM Foundation. The form can be found at Data is collected initially from a form hosted on UWM s web servers (see figure 1 below). (Figure 1: Part 1 of donation process form hosted at uwm.edu)

2 Once the form hosted on the Foundation s web site is completed, the user is forwarded to the U.S. Bank epayment system. What follows is an example of the screens the user sees when making a credit card payment: (Figure 2: User selects method of payment credit card or echeck)

3 (Figure 3: U.S. Bank confirms the user s contribution)

4 (Figure 4: Credit card and billing information is entered)

5 (Figure 5: Contact information is entered)

6 (Figure 6: User confirms contribution. Once confirmed, order is processed.) Once the payment is submitted, the payment information (excluding credit card information) is stored in a remittance file which can be downloaded from an administrative page hosted on U.S. Bank s web site. We are currently working with U.S. Bank to set up secure FTP transmission of the remittance file, which is processed each night at midnight. The pilot project was successfully launched in April of There were some glitches during the setup process, but once those were worked out, the launch was smooth. Pros and Cons No system is without its good and bad features. And, while it may take additional pilot projects to truly understand the ins and outs of the system, detailed below are some of the pros and cons encountered during the setup the UWM Foundation pilot project.

7 Pros Security is handled via U.S. Bank Having U.S. Bank handle all of the security and hosting of credit card information is invaluable. Hosting that information at UWM would pose a significant security risk, but U.S. Bank s systems are designed to handle such a risk. Ability to process checks Providing users with the ability to process payments with a check is key. It s an added feature that many epayment sites don t/can t offer. Processing occurs real-time UWM staff do not have to be responsible for processing credit cards manually. Additionally, because credit cards are processed real-time, UWM staff are able to avoid processing bad credit cards or cards with insufficient funds. Once general back-end is created, development time is minimal Web development staff estimate that once a general back-end system is built to process U.S. Bank remittance data (see below for more details), individual epayment forms can be built in a matter of hours. Cons Inflexibility Perhaps the biggest con of this system is its inflexibility. While it is easy to connect to the U.S. Bank system, the system doesn t provide much flexibility in terms of programming and usability. Some instances of this inflexibility are detailed below: o All changes have to go through U.S. Bank. The developer is very limited in terms of what can be done without intervention from U.S. Bank. Most aspects of development require a call to U.S. Bank from creating additional parameters to checking remittance files for the most recent test payments. o Inability to pass variables back to UWM outside of remittance file. Variables can be passed from UWM to U.S. Bank, however, U.S. Bank cannot pass variables back to UWM, unless they are included in the remittance file which is provided each night at midnight. o Limited number of variables that can be passed. U.S. Bank allows only ten variables to be passed from UWM to U.S. Bank. While they appear to be willing to do a few more than ten, it is unclear what their actual limit is. o No ability to test once form is moved to production. Once the epayment system is moved from the U.S. Bank development environment to their production environment, developers lose the ability to test the form. Developers no longer have access to the development environment and, because the system is now in production, dummy credit card numbers will no longer work. U.S. Bank is looking into our options. Lack of Training/Documentation Documentation and training for developers was lacking. There were many instances in which time was wasted trying to solve a problem that would have likely been avoided if there was documentation explaining how the system works and what sort of data the system expects.

8 Many Steps to Make a Payment In total, there are 8 screens that a user must click through in order to make a payment or contribution. Difficult to Avoid Duplicative Content Because of a legal restriction, the customer must enter personal information (name, address, phone, etc.) on the U.S. Bank side. In some instances it seems odd to ask the customer for that information later in the payment process as opposed to asking for it up front on a form hosted on the UWM side. While that information could be obtained on the UWM side, the customer would just have to re-enter it on the U.S. Bank side. Unresponsive Reps The responsiveness of the U.S. Bank representatives has been less than impressive. And, with so much development work depending on the U.S. Bank reps, it can cause delays in production. Next Steps To proceed, the following need to take place: Work with U.S. Bank to set up and configure general campus epayment account. All payments collected online that will be posted to the UWM account system will use this U.S. Bank account. Configure and test secure FTP transfer of remittance files. A Data Transfer Questionnaire (DTQ) has been completed and sent to U.S. Bank. Build an online system to merge data collected on the UWM side with data collected on the U.S. Bank side. Because multiple epayment applications will be using the same U.S. Bank configuration, data will need to be collected differently than it was with the Foundation pilot (which uses its own U.S. Bank configuration). Some data will be collected and stored on UWM systems, while other data will be collected by U.S. Bank and provided in a remittance file sent each night. The application that needs to be built will collect the data from both locations, merge them together, and display them in an easy-to-read format for the end-user. A plan has been generated to build this application and development is underway. Estimated development time is 40 hours. Determine what variable(s) needs to be passed to U.S. Bank to be included in the remittance file to ensure that money is processed into the proper funds (UDDS?). Identify another pilot project to test the application mentioned above and the general UWM/U.S. Bank configuration. Estimated development time for an individual, basic epayment form is 4-5 hours. Test the remittance file and upload process into the shared financials system. Document entire process, determine best practices.