Commerce Service Bus: Powering Payments Innovation
Over the course of the last 5 days, we have discussed several elements that were announced in a Press Release on June 7. These discussions have included:
All of these bits of technology enable important, required components to building a holistic payments workflow that includes Value-Added services alongside payment services and coupled with data services.
But how do they all function together?
The Commerce Service Bus.
The Commerce Service Bus is a core component of the Platform and is the technology that supports dynamic and flexible Commerce Business Rules, provides the ability for software companies to include Value-Added services in their workflows, and extends the Federated Identity governance inherent in the Platform. The exposure of this component and its features, through Commerce APIs, allows for the creation of new, innovative workflows by software companies & developers.
Importantly, time-to-market on these workflows is expedited due to a combination of technology, people, and process.
To be clear, one of the core tenants of IP Commerce (both from a technology & people perspective) is to ensure our Partners…of all types…can enable the services they want with the Partners they have selected.
On the Commerce Service Bus page on the IP Commerce website, there are several scenarios discussed relating to the integration process that a software company undertakes. The examples below are just a few examples, but will provide you perspective. Let’s consider a few Use Cases to supplement these scenarios:
Risk Management as a Service
After connecting their service to the Platform, Risk Management service providers are able to position their services alongside the process of integrating more traditional payment methods through a consistent set of Commerce APIs. For the software company, Risk Management (as a service) is now easily added to any payment integration ensuring customer needs, and opportunities, are quickly met.
A single Platform. Multiple Commerce APIs. New opportunities for innovation.
3rd-Party Security Services
The market has, and continues to, demand solutions to secure customer data thereby offsetting risk and resolving compliance challenges (for the software company) more easily. The Commerce Service Bus enables 3rd-Party tokenization & encryption providers to offer their security services along side the services of traditional processors & acquirers. Or, the Commerce Service Bus can be leveraged to extend the native service of these providers
No lengthy back-end integrations are required to bring security services to market.
Serial Service Payments
When adding Value-Added Services to an open API, there is a challenge inherent in sequencing and controlling the transaction flow. The Commerce Service Bus enables Serial Service Payments (as a Commerce Business Rule) to ensure the right services are leveraged, in the right order, enabling service-rich solutions that meet customers’ needs immediately. For example, a transaction is initiated, runs through Sales Tax calculation services, is tokenized to remove sensitive payment account data, and submitted for processing. Subsequently, certain non-sensitive data may be published to a separate application workflow accessible only to credentialed users.
Payment application integration with Commerce APIs, overlaid with appropriate security controls through Federated Identity, and managed via Commerce Business Rules. All of this, and more, enabled by the Commerce Service Bus.
In closing this brief discussion on IP Commerce technology, I invite you to contact myself (or any member of the IP Commerce team) to discuss the technology in greater detail.
Perhaps the most important element to remember:
“Not everyone who wants to, or can deliver, an open API or integration Lab will succeed. Developers don’t have unlimited time or resources and will not create applications on every platform. IP Commerce has the experience, people and process in addition to the technology to make sure our partners succeed and are first to market with clear and endurable advantages.
Efficient integrations to payment services are only a portion of the equation when providing commerce APIs. Ensuring the development community is enabled throughout their commercialization process is paramount and why we are excited to announce these enhancements to our platform.” – Alfred ‘Chip’ Kahn IV CEO, IP Commerce
There is a word mentioned above…”commercialization”…that is extremely important to Software Companies & developers and is often overlooked. We will discuss the commercialization process next week.
?What’s your perspective? Agree? Disagree? Anything to add? Critiques? The comment form is below…
June 11, 2010