Payment Networks represent the card brands (such as Visa, Mastercard, and American Express) associated with transactions processed through a payment provider in Counter Sales. Setting them up is optional, but they provide an additional layer of identification for the card used in a transaction and allow you to assign unique Payment Method Codes per card brand.

Overview

When a payment provider processes a transaction, it typically returns an identifier or reference code that indicates which card brand was used. Counter Sales uses this to match the transaction to the appropriate Payment Network record. This allows Counter Sales to identify the Payment Network associated with the card and, if configured, apply a specific Payment Method Code for that network.

By default, you may have a single Payment Method Code for your payment provider. Payment Networks allow you to define different Payment Method Codes depending on which card brand is used in the transaction.

Set up a payment provider

1. Navigate to the Counter Sales Payment Networks page in Business Central.
2. Select Add Payment Networks if no networks have been set up (initializes the records with default values for the standard card brands: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, JCB, and a blank entry).
3. Specify a Payment Method Code if you want a unique code for that card brand for each network (optional).
4. Populate the Identifier Code field for each network with the payment provider’s unique reference for that card brand.

If you are using an Insight Works payment provider extension, you can populate Identifier Codes automatically. Under Actions, locate the sub-menu for your specific payment provider and select Set Identifier Code. When prompted, you can apply the Identifier Codes to the Payment Networks, the Payment Provider Payment Networks, or both.

Payment Provider Payment Networks

Payment Provider Payment Networks are an additional level of configuration beneath the standard Payment Networks. This layer allows you to set up specific configurations for each Payment Network and payment provider combination. This is useful when your company uses multiple payment providers.

For example, you may use one provider for card-not-present transactions and another for card-present transactions. Since each provider has Identifier Codes, the Payment Provider Payment Networks allow you to define a separate Identifier Code (and optionally, a separate Payment Method Code) for each combination.

To set these up, open the Counter Sales Payment Networks page in Business Central, select the Payment Network you want to configure, and select Payment Providers. From there, you can configure the specific details for each payment provider.

Magnetic stripe card reader support

If you are using a basic magnetic stripe card reader connected to your computer, Counter Sales can use it to pull card details and identify the Payment Network at the point of sale. To support this, Payment Networks allow you to specify the track patterns (e.g., Track 1 and/or Track 2) that the reader is expected to produce when a card is swiped.

When you run Add Payment Networks, the blank Payment Network record is populated with standard magnetic stripe patterns for identifying and extracting card details, while each card brand Payment Network record is populated with its expected card number pattern.

When a card is swiped, Counter Sales reads the track data and extracts the card number and, where available, the cardholder name printed on the card. This is particularly useful during manual card entry; instead of typing card details, the user can swipe the card and have the information populated automatically.