SugarCRM – Forte Payment Gateway Integration

Over the last decades many small to large business organizations have started their respective digital transformation journeys. Increasing fraction of business processes are done online. One such process is to processing of payment information. Customer facing representatives are assigned the responsibility of collecting payment card details at the time the order placement in the respective CRMs to reduce receivables and capture funds.

Today we will explore how Integrating SugarCRM with payment gateways such as Forte enable businesses to realize the funds faster and in a secure manner.

With everything now getting digital. There is a need to accept credit cards, debit cards and e-check payments online to grow the customer base. This can be achieved by integrating CRM with payment gateways.

Learn how to integrate credit card with complex applications like SAP.

What is a Payment Gateway?

A payment gateway is a service that authorizes credit card or direct payments processing for e-businesses. It allows you to place secured transactions between client banks with the merchant’s bank account. There are many payment gateway options available to integrate with CRM among them Forte Payment Gateway is one of the secure popular gateways.

What is Forte?

Forte is a payment gateway system that offers merchants a broad range of payment solutions, including cards processing, ACH/eCheck payments, check verification, and fraud prevention. Forte believes all businesses and organisations are different and works with organizations to develop right solutions. Forte offers you innovative, modern and secure payment solutions to help your business run better.

Forte is dedicated to helping organizations from small to big size to reach their full potential.

Why should we integrate SugarCRM with Forte?

SugarCRM is one of the leading CRM platforms which gives you great scope to customize the platform according to the business need. Integrating such CRM to any other application is an add-on to the CRM functionality.

SugarCRM by itself does not have any payment system. It can be customized to manage payments within CRM by integrating with payment gateway applications. Forte is one of the popular payment gateway which serves many small to mid size companies. Integrating SugarCRM with Forte eliminates your worry on the payment front and ensures that your primary focus remains on your core business processes.

Hence with this solution sales representatives do no need to update both the systems manually. This solution also reduces human errors and streamlines the entire business process. Detailed transaction logs are available just in case you need to refer to the same.

Steps to Integrate SugarCRM with Forte

Below are the steps to integrate with forte payment gateway

• First signup for a Forte sandbox account here.
• Now create your API credentials. Login to your development account.
• Navigate to developer->API Credentials from menu. Enter a name in the name field.

• Click on the Create New API button to generate your new API Access ID and API Secure Key.
• Copy the newly generated values in a secured place/in SugarCRM config to use in authenticating your REST API requests.
• Below is sample code for creating credit card transactions is the forte sandbox.

<?php
$creds = [
'org_id' => '457850', //organisation Id
'loc_id' => '46589', //location Id
'access_id' => 'API Access ID',
'secure_key'=> 'API Secure Key'
];
$url = "https://sandbox.forte.net/api/v3/organizations/org_{{$creds->org_id}}/locations/loc_{{$creds->loc_id}}/transactions";

$request = array (
  'action' => 'sale',
  'authorization_amount' => 100,
  'billing_address' => array (
'first_name' => 'Test',
    'last_name' => 'Customer',
  ),
  'card' => array (
    'card_type' => 'visa',
    'name_on_card' => 'Jenni MC',
    'account_number' => '4111111111111111',
    'expire_month' => '12',
    'expire_year' => '2020',
    'card_verification_value' => '123',
  ),
);

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
  CURLOPT_URL => $url,
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
  CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 0,
  CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
  CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
  CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "POST",
  CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS =>json_encode($request),
  CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
    "X-Forte-Auth-Organization-Id: org_{{$creds->org_id}}",
    "Authorization: Basic ".base64_encode({{$creds->access_id}}:{{$creds->secure_key}}),
    "Content-Type: application/json"
  ),
));

$response = curl_exec($curl);

curl_close($curl);
echo $response;

• Below is the sample implementation in SugarCRM Quotes module that places transactions in Forte.
• Open Quote record click on action->Make Payment button as shown in the below screenshot.

• Once the transaction is placed in the Forte. Transaction response status is updated in the “Transaction Status” field.

• Now login to the forte account.
• Click on Transactions.

• The transaction is created in Forte. The status “Ready”  indicates that the transaction is approved and is waiting for the settlement.
• Transactions in Sandbox are to be manually settled by the Forte department/team. A mail should be raised to “integration@forte.net” or to the support team with location Id and the date of transaction. So that the transaction will be settled manually. How ever In production, ACH transactions settle over the course of 4 business days unless faster funding is elected for the account.

Advantages of SugarCRM and Forte payment gateway integration

1. Streamlines cash flow by automated payment transactions.
2. Handling and tracking of recurring and single payments will become easy.
3. 360 degree view of customer and customer transaction history can be seen in the CRM system.
4. Eliminates security risks.

Integrating SugarCRM with Forte will create a memorable customer experience by making seamless secure payments and also amplifies the revenue numbers by accepting the payments in real-time.

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