Value Added Services Overview

Tokens, Recurring Billing and Account Updater are complementary value-added services that are compatible with all of our hardware solutions, our Virtual Terminal Solution, and the Bank of America Gateway. All merchants have the option to use and manage these services from within their Merchant Services account. Token Management is provided with all accounts; however, Recurring Billing and Account Updater must be signed up for directly with your Merchant Consultant. Additionally, e-commerce merchants who integrate to the Bank of America Gateway via our Card Not Present Integration Toolkit have the option to manage these services via API.

This article provides a high-level introduction to each service for merchants who access these services via their merchant services account in Business Advantage 360 online banking, and are not using our Card Not Present Integration Toolkit. The article explains how these services work together, and refers to other articles/user guides that are specific to each service. Advanced e-commerce merchants planning to utilize these services via API can reference the Recurring Billing API Developer Guide and/or Account Updater API Developer Guide.

Token Management

Tokens allow merchants with repeat customers to create tokenized profiles for their clients to securely store client information for customer management purposes or easy repeat billing. 

A token saves a customer’s name, shipping and billing address, contact information, and any custom fields collected by the merchant. A token securely stores a payment method attributes, like card number, expiration date, billing zip code, and CVV. A single token can be associated to multiple cards if desired. The functionality provided by Tokens is commonly referred to as allowing merchants to keep “cards on file.”

All merchants can create tokens using Token Management within their Merchant Services Business Advantage 360 account. Merchants do not need to sign up for Token Management Services – these are included with all Bank of America merchant services accounts. Merchants do incur a fee for the creation of each Token. 

Recurring Billing

Recurring Billing is a value-added service that allows merchants to accept recurring payments, either for subscriptions or payment plans. Merchants create Recurring Billing plans within their merchant services account. Their customers sign up with them directly for a subscription or a payment plan, and the merchant uses a token to assign the customer to the appropriate Recurring Billing plan(s.) Merchants can then automatically process recurring payments from their end users without storing any sensitive customer or payment information.

Account Updater

Success of card-on-file and recurring billing programs depends upon the validity of your payment information you have on file for your customer: your Billing Tokens. Billing Tokens can declined at the time of checkout or billing if the underlying card information has expired or changed.  Account Updater helps you keep Billing Tokens up to date, so that you can improve authorization success rates by identifying invalid cards.  

In this way, when a customer has provided you their card information to “keep on file,” or has registered for a subscription or a payment plan, Account Updater can help you provide them an effortless checkout and billing experience for future transactions, by automatically updating their card if their card number or expiration date changes. The customer does not have to remember to contact you and provide you this information. Account Updater helps your business reduce failed transactions, and can thereby reduce customer frustration.  

If you manage your Account Updater service through your Merchant Services account in online banking you will use the Token Harvest method to update your cards on file. Token Harvest will automatically update expired Billing Tokens monthly, on the harvest date that you’ve selected. It will also provide you a downloadable report of accounts that have been closed entirely.

You can refer to Account Updater FAQs for more information on how to use and manage your Account Updater service.