Offline payment cassettes

Offline payment is one of the available payment methods to customers should the merchant choose to support it. Offline payment refers to payments that require manual processing. For example, this payment method can apply to the customer who is uncomfortable submitting a credit card number online and prefers a Cash On Delivery (C.O.D) option, and the customer who submits credit card information where there is no relationship set up with an Acquirer for automatic approval.

In both cases, it is the merchant's responsibility to manually ensure that the order is shipped and that the order state is moved to the next appropriate level by using the Payments user interface. 

The Payments OfflineCard cassette is used for payments where the customer supplies the payment card information on the checkout page. The OfflineCard Cassette records this information in the WebSphere Commerce Payments database table for the OfflineCard Cassette. The Merchant Administrator can process the payment manually later using the Payments user interface. In addition, the CustomOffline Cassette is available for manual payment methods such as C.O.D. and Bill Me, and also allows merchants to define their own offline payment processing methods. Under the CustomOffline Cassette, each offline method is represented as a different account.

Offline payment processing can result in a time consuming routine for the merchant, and can also increase the cost of doing business for the merchant.