Introduction to FlexCharge
The FlexCharge solution gives shoppers the ability to complete a purchase when their payment is declined.
As a merchant, this will boost your approval rates and help you capture more sales without adding friction to the consumer buying experience.
With FlexCharge, you can recover 30% or more of your declines with transactions run on MIDs owned and managed by FlexCharge.
How FlexCharge can benefit your business?
Boosts your approval rates by significantly reducing the number of abandoned carts due to declined payment transactions.
Gives you a clear view of your payment declines and the impact of FlexCharge on your sales through the FlexCharge merchant portal.
Protects your MID as FlexCharge processes these higher risk transactions via its own MID.
How does FlexCharge work?
FlexCharge addresses the majority of your payment declines, not just fraud-related reason codes.
FlexCharge uses machine learning and advanced risk management models to approve declined transactions in real time, most times in a frictionless for consumers. Consumers simply click “OK” at time of checkout.
Consumers do not need to register or provide any additional information, and they never pay any fees, interest or penalties, just the purchase amount.
FlexCharge offers two distinct flows covering customer-initiated transactions (CIT) and merchant-initiated transactions (MIT).
Example Flow for a Customer-Initiated Transaction
Onboarding to the FlexCharge Service
The steps for onboarding to the FlexCharge service are simple:
Contact your sticky.io Client Success Manager. They will connect you to a FlexCharge representative who will share a contract for the service.
Once signed, FlexCharge will send you an onboarding email. The email will contain a link to schedule a meeting time with the FlexCharge team to continue the onboarding process. The email will also login credentials to your sandbox merchant portal.
It is necessary that your development representative attend this call.
To proceed, FlexCharge and sticky.io will require the following pieces of information:
Descriptors
URL / Websites
Contact information for your account
After the meeting, your technical team will need to implement the SenseJS library and the FlexCharge widget. Follow FlexCharge's instructions in the FlexCharge merchant portal for integrating the SenseJS library and widget onto your site.
The snippet is unique to your instance and MUST be pulled directly from your FlexCharge instance.
FlexCharge's help center documentation can be referenced here
Your sticky.io representative will configure FlexCharge as a gateway provider within sticky.io.
FlexCharge will provide you the necessary API keys, tokenization keys and Merchant IDs to configure in our system as a part of your new provider profile.
Once configured, return to your provider profile and copy the webhook URL to your clipboard. A sample URL is pictured below, but will be unique to your instance.
With that URL, return to your FlexCharge dashboard and within the Developers menu, click into Webhooks.
Click Create within the Endpoints box.
Copy the URL into the appropriate box and then, click the order.completed event from the listed Available Events to subscribe to this event. Click Save and repeat the process for the payment.chargeback.received and order.refunded events.
sticky.io will run test transactions on your behalf to ensure your integration is functioning smoothly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is credit card data handled securely when processed through FlexCharge?
Customer credit card data is encrypted and tokenized before sharing with FlexCharge. All credit card information is handled in a PCI-compliant fashion.
Does FlexCharge handle raw CC data?
No. Credit Card data is encrypted and tokenized before being shared with FlexCharge. Both FlexCharge and sticky.io are PCI-level 1 compliant.
How do I get paid out from FlexCharge?
You’ll be paid out once a month, towards the end of each calendar month. FlexCharge charges consumers directly for the amounts owed on their transactions. Within the merchant portal, you can see information about your payouts within the Settlements tab.
How does FlexCharge handle sales tax on orders?
It is the retailer’s responsibility to determine any taxes applied to the purchase and ensure they are included in the total. Flexcharge is not responsible for collecting or reporting taxes on any transactions.
How are fees calculated?
Fees are spelled out in your contract, but they are deducted directly from the payouts you receive from Flexcharge. Fees can be applied to refunds, such as late return fees, and chargebacks as defined in the contract.
Does FlexCharge work on initial transactions or rebills?
FlexCharge works for initials or customer-initiated transactions and also for rebills or merchant-initiated transactions.
Does FlexCharge work with orders that are not placed online? Our orders are placed through a call center and connects to sticky via API.
For failed MIT transactions, the FlexCharge service operates in the background, trying to re-process the failed payment transactions. For some specific error codes that cannot be solved in the background, FlexCharge will contact the customer via email and/or SMS, asking for additional details such as a different payment method.
What is seen by the customer on their CC statement — is it still a descriptor of our business or would it only show flexcharge?
The descriptor is customizable and will match your business.
Who takes the risk of non-payment?
As FlexCharge we take the liability for credit and fraud risk for the transactions that are accepted via our service. You will be settled irrespective of whether FlexCharge has been able to charge the customer or not.