Addition of a retail payment processing component to an existing payment ecosystem, which is presently focused on handling of recurring payments, and, consequently, is equipped mostly with batch processing functionality, is a serious challenge. The problem is extremely relevant for recurring billing software vendors who decide to make their operations model more robust, flexible, and universal.
Implementation of retail payment processing functionality is, usually, associated with addition of a card-present EMV solution to the payment processing platform, which originally handled online (card-not-present) recurring payments. Another important aspect to address is processing of one-time payments as opposed to recurring ones. Real-time credit card processing often calls for serious technological changes, which need to be introduced into the existing system, because subscription billing services and handling of non-recurring payments, are different tasks from technological viewpoint.
Finally, a series of business-related issues needs to be addressed. These concern different phases of life-cycles of merchants and payments, payment terminal fulfillment process organization, integrations to be conducted, and the peculiarities of handling payments of different types in different countries and currencies.
A detailed strategy for addition of a retail payment processing component to a recurring payment processing platform is described in the respective use case on Paylosophy.