How the PMU service works

The PMU service runs daily in the background to proactively keep your credit card payment methods up to date. This proactive approach helps you avoid losing an entire bill cycle, which can happen when you rely on reactive updates after a payment fails.

Pricing for the updater service, which is payable to the updater service provider, is optimized so that you can run the service as often as needed. The provider charges fees only for credit card matches.

For example, if a merchant sends 100,000 credit cards to check for updates and the service returns 5 matches, the merchant is charged only for the 5 credit cards that require updating.

Set up and daily processing

Each updater service provider supplies the credentials that you need to set up the Zuora PMU service. After you set up the service, Zuora starts a daily automated scheduler that performs the following actions:

1. Identifies eligible credit cards that may require updates.
2. Collects the applicable credit card information and sends it to the updater service in a batch request file.
3. The updater service validates the file and forwards it to the card networks to check for updates.

After Zuora submits the batch, you can view the status of all files in the PMU console in Zuora.

Results and payment method updates

Within approximately one week, the credit card provider returns the results to Zuora, and Zuora updates the payment method and payment information for the credit cards that were sent.

When the PMU service updates a payment method, Zuora performs the following actions:

• Creates a new payment method in Zuora.
• Copies the user associated with the original payment method to the new payment method, whether that user is active or inactive.
• Closes the original payment method.
  Note:

  Result-file processing can vary by updater provider. For Adyen PMU, if Adyen returns an unencrypted result file because no card updates are present, Zuora does not currently process that file format. In this case, the PMU batch can fail and some updates in the result file might not be applied.

Data export and scheduling

To export payment method data, use the Payment Method Update data source.

You configure the PMU to run a specific number of days before bills are sent to your customers, based on the bill cycle day. You can also select which updater services to use.

The following sections describe how to use the PMU service in more detail.

Batch Summary List View

Once you have logged into the payment method updater, you will see a summary list view of all batches submitted from Zuora to the account updater. To the right, under Views , there are three statuses that correspond to the table headers on the summary list view. Zuora defines a processing flow which includes a set of steps and transitions that a batch of payment method updater goes through during its lifecycle. The three statuses are defined for a Payment Method Updating Batch. They are Processing , Completed , and Error .

To view the detail information for a batch, click on the link for the applicable Zuora Batch Number .

Retrieving information of PMU instances

To retrieve the detailed information of all PMU instances on your tenant except for American Express, use the List Payment Method Updater instances API operation.

Data Source Export

Navigate to Data Sources and select the Payment Method Update data source to export PMU data. See the troubleshooting section to learn more about scenarios to export data.