Collection Groups Overview

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Overview

Collection Groups in your Aria instance allow you to support multiple payment scenarios for different payment methods and currencies, either via single or multiple Payment Gateways. When an account or its Billing Group is associated with a Collection Group, Aria facilitates payments (and related financial transactions) for services to the specified Payment Gateway.

For most business use cases, associating an account with a single Collection Group is sufficient. However, if an account chooses to pay for different services with different payment methods, that account would require multiple Billing Groups. Depending on your Payment Gateway configuration, those Billing Groups might require different Collection Group associations.

A simple example is an account wants to pay for one service with Credit Card A, and another service with Credit Card B. One of your two Payment Gateways supports Credit Card A; and the other Payment Gateway supports Card B. The account requires two Billing Groups, each associated with a different Collection Group: one associated to the Card A Payment Gateway, and the other associated to the Card B Payment Gateway.

Note:

When you have multiple Payment Gateways and Collection Groups: if you do not specify a collection group for an account, Aria chooses the payment gateway with the lowest processor ID number (assigned by Aria) to process that account's transactions.
You cannot assign multiple Collection Groups with different Payment Gateways that accept the same payment method to a single account.

Collection Group Scenarios

The table below summarizes different scenarios in which you would create collection groups and the steps needed to conduct financial transactions with customers in each scenario:

If…	First…	Then…
You will be using multiple payment gateways that accept the same forms of payment.	Create a collection group for each payment gateway. Include the merchant account information for each payment gateway.	Add accounts to the collection group for the applicable payment gateway.
You will be using different merchant accounts for the same payment gateway.	Create a collection group for each merchant account associated with the payment gateway.	Add accounts to the collection group for the applicable combination of payment gateway and merchant account.
You will be using a payment gateway that supports multiple currencies.	Create a collection group for each currency supported by the payment gateway. Include the merchant account information for each currency.	Add accounts to the collection group for the applicable combination of payment gateway and currency/merchant account.