Cashbox FAQs

Q. Since CashBox is an on-demand solution, what is the process for integrating it with a merchant's website?

A. Integrating Vindicia CashBox is simply a matter of connecting the Vindicia API into a merchant's website. The Vindicia API enables merchants to completely customize the configuration, controls, data flow, reporting infrastructure and presentment of data to their systems and portals. CashBox is architected to provide a seamless customer experience that is fully controlled by the merchant.

Q. What is the Vindicia API?

A. The Vindicia API is SOAP-based, and is available in a variety of different client libraries: Java, PHP, Perl, C++, C# and ASP.NET. In addition, developers can write their own client libraries in the language of their choice using the available WSDL files.

Q. What is CashBox's level of availability and how do you support that level?

The Vindicia CashBox solution maintains a scalability level of at least 5 times our current transaction run-rate and delivers 99.99+% uptime to all critical merchant-facing functions. All logical components are hardware redundant and infrastructure installations are physically and network redundant across geographic regions.

Q. How much flexibility does CashBox provide merchants to define billing plans?

A. CashBox allows complete flexibility for unlimited billing plans. Product definitions/SKUs, billing plan definitions and customer information can be combined in various permutations. This combination then controls the billing payment profile, encompassing details such as billing frequency, amounts, notifications, etc. The CashBox API Reference Guide provides more details around these objects and their related flexibility.

Q. Does CashBox support regional pricing?

A. Yes, regional pricing is supported with the use of product definitions/SKUs and associated billing plans. CashBox would process the transaction as defined by the buying process completed by the merchant's customer at its website and subsequently communicated via the API to Vindicia for processing.

Q. Can CashBox bill and collect payments in local currencies?

A. Vindicia CashBox accepts payment in any currency type.

For example, if a customer in Germany is purchasing from the merchant's site and the billing options are in Euros or US Dollars, this transaction would be processed by Vindicia in accordance with the merchant's configuration which depends on the transaction and settlement agreements in place with their payment processor. A single product can have different prices based on the currency.

Q. What payment methods does CashBox support?

A. CashBox supports a broad range of payment methods including credit cards, signature debit cards, ACH, PayPal, and regional payment methods such as Boleto Bancario in Brazil. We constantly are expanding this list based on customer requests.

Q. Which payment processors does CashBox support?

A. Vindicia supports a number of the leading payment processors around the world including Chase Paymentech, FDMS, Global Collect, Litle, Merchant e-Solutions, and others.

Q. Do I need a separate merchant account with a payment processor?

A. Yes, CashBox serves as a billing platform and gateway to the most popular payment processors. Our merchants maintain control over their relationship with payment processors and give us permission to submit transactions on their behalf. Please visit our billing ecosystem page to understand where CashBox fits into the whole payment process.

Q. My payment processor / gateway say they handle recurring billing and fraud prevention, how is that different from what you offer?

A. With recurring billing and fraud management, there are many levels of service that can be provided. Payment processors and gateways typically provide some of the basic services to manage fraud and do have support for recurring billing transactions. However, the advanced functionality that CashBox offers: customer account management, advanced billing logic, customer communication, automatic sales tax calculation cannot be matched by your payment processor or existing gateway

Q. How does CashBox handle taxes at all levels, both in the US and internationally?

A. CashBox has its own sales tax engine that calculates the appropriate tax at the time of purchase to ensure correct percentages are added to the product price. We support tax regimes internationally including GST and VAT. Sales tax is calculated using merchant nexus information, taxable status of products, as well as any special jurisdiction rules. Vindicia regularly and automatically updates our tax rules to stay current with sales tax regulations.

Q. Does CashBox support usage-based billing?

A. CashBox supports a wide variety of usage-based billing models including those for virtual currencies, loyalty programs, and service usage metering. These models can be fit into either subscription or one-time billing plans. In addition, CashBox supports the ability to have multiple types of usage units per billing plan, and multiple plans per account.

Q. Does CashBox support the granting of free time in a subscription?

A. CashBox supports having free periods anywhere in the billing plan, including the entire plan. For example, CashBox can support a subscription with a free first period, or a "buy 3 get 1 free" model. Merchants can also use CashBox to send email notifications to customers who are about to either end their free trial (reminding them they will be billed with the details) as well as customers who are about to reach the end of their subscription (offering a chance to up-sell or cross-sell to another offering).

Q. What reporting capabilities does CashBox provide?

A. CashBox provides complete reporting on all aspects of the billing process, including product, billing plan, affiliate and campaign ID. We have nearly twenty reports available online on a 24x7x365 basis. The reports can be downloaded as CSV or Excel spreadsheets or our merchants can receive a direct data feed via the Vindicia API to their backend systems.

Q. Can CashBox use pre-generated or "on the fly" generated discount offers?

A. CashBox allows for the inclusion of discount information in an email notification. This would allow customers to get access to a code, for example, they would then enter on the merchant site to invoke a specific plan. Cancellation emails can also include "save sale" offers or promotions, pointing the customer to a URL on the merchant site in order to invoke the offer.

Q. Can CashBox track and report on Affiliate traffic as well as billing associated with those transactions?

A. Affiliate order and billing information can be received by CashBox via the customer API interface. Specific offers, pricing and terms can be incorporated into appropriate product SKUs and billing plan mixes to appropriate reflect agent and partner-based traffic. Vindicia can send confirmation as long as specific affiliate-based SKUs are defined.

Q. Do merchants still need a gateway or sales tax engine with CashBox?

A. CashBox fulfills both of those functionalities for our merchants. With Vindicia CashBox, no separate gateway or sales tax processing services are required from third-party vendors.

Q. Can business managers and executives update billing plans and product information without going through the API?

A. Yes, business executives have the ability to leverage the online portal capabilities of CashBox, through which they can make changes to billing plans, update product configurations and rapidly respond to changing market dynamics without the need to involve technical resources.

Q. How can customer service personnel interact with CashBox?

A. CashBox provides customer service representatives and managers the ability to update customer billing information, make changes to preferred payment methods, and even initiate the refund process in the event of potential chargebacks. In addition, many of our merchants choose to integrate CashBox into their existing tools and processes via the Vindicia API.

Q. How does Vindicia guard against unauthorized access to specific customer information?

A. Vindicia provides role-based access control to the portal so that different people have access to different capabilities. For example, customer service representatives may be able to update customer billing information but not be able to edit billing plans.

Q. Is Vindicia PCI compliant?

A. We are in our fourth year of being an externally-audited PCI Level 1 Services Provider and are also SAS 70 Type II audited in order to ease Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for our merchants. In addition, we support the Safe Harbor Principles and adhere to the provisions of the European Data Privacy Act. Merchants can request a copy of our external audits, view our Privacy Policy, and obtain further details around our security technologies and processes by reading our white paper, "Vindicia Technology Overview".

Q. Why do merchants choose CashBox?

A. We offer a solution that uniquely focuses on driving profitability for our online merchants through incorporates global billing support, fraud management, sales tax calculation, and support for a wide variety of business models.

Q. What type of customer retention increase can I expect to see after implementing CashBox?

A. Of course, retention depends on many variables, but our merchants typically see at least a 6-10% increase in their customer retention rate. With subscription billing environments, this compounds very quickly on a revenue and profitability basis.

Q. Do I retain ownership of my customer data?

A. This is one of the founding tenets of Vindicia. You will always retain the ownership of your customer data and the customer experience. We feel that your customers should be exactly that – your customers. We won't inject ourselves into that experience and pull customers away from your site. In fact, if you choose to terminate your CashBox contract we will happily give you all the customer data that you have acquired on our platform (provided the transfer is to a PCI DSS compliant location).

Q. Why an on-demand service instead of on-premise software?

A. By providing our solutions as a service instead of installed software, we are able to ease compliance requirements for our merchants and take advantage of shared customer information to aid in fraud reduction, such as known "bad" customers. Our on-demand infrastructure also allows for easy integration into our merchant's websites, back-end systems and processes.

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