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A prepaid instrument is a special payment method (like a credit card or a bank account) that can be used by a sender in a payment instruction. You can define the following rules (also known as prepaid instructions) to specify the usage of the prepaid balance:
Sender using the prepaid instrument
Recipient offering the prepaid instrument
Caller executing the prepaid transactions on Amazon FPS
Recharge limit to which the prepaid instrument can be recharged
Validity of the prepaid instrument
The rules (except the last two) can be expressed in the GateKeeper language.
You can create a prepaid instrument using the Amazon FPS Prepaid Instrument Installation Pipeline. A prepaid instrument has two participants: the sender purchasing the prepaid instrument and the recipient issuing the prepaid instrument. Both the participants must agree to create a prepaid instrument.
Only the recipients are allowed to issue prepaid instruments in Amazon FPS. Calling applications (or callers) in a marketplace scenario that involves a unique sender, a caller, and a recipient, cannot issue prepaid instruments on behalf of the recipients.
The following steps are required to purchase a prepaid balance:
Create the prepaid instrument.
Set up a token to fund the balance associated with prepaid instrument.
Set up a token to use prepaid balance.
Fund the prepaid balance associated with the instrument.
You can use the Prepaid Instrument Installation Pipeline to perform steps 1, 2, and 3. The step 4 is described in the Funding Prepaid Balance section.
The following diagram illustrates the steps involved in creating a prepaid instrument and setting up tokens.
The sender visits the DigitalDownload web site and purchases $10.00 prepaid card that is valid until December 2008.
DigitalDownload redirects the sender to the prepaid instrument installation pipeline with following input parameters.
Parameter | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
fundingAmount | 10 | The amount of the prepaid balanced purchased by the sender. |
validityExpiry | 1182314231 | This value is specified in seconds from the EPOCH time. You customer will, however, see the validity date in the standard date-time format. |
callerReferenceSender | PrepaidDigitalDownloadSender1182332067645 | A unique value that is used to identify the sender token. This value can also be used to retrieve the token if it is lost or not returned from the Amazon FPS co-branded UI pipeline. |
callerReferenceFunding | PrepaidDigitalDownloadFunding1182332067645 | A unique value that identifies the transaction. |
paymentReason | Buying a prepaid card | The reason for making this payment. |
pipelineName | SetupPrepaid | The name of this pipeline. |
The sender signs in using an Amazon.com e-mail address and password.
The sender selects one of the available payment methods to purchase the prepaid instrument. This page appears if he doesn't have a default payment method.
The sender views the details of the payment authorization and clicks the Confirm button.
Amazon FPS creates the following and sends them as output in the return URL.
Prepaid instrument—used as sender's payment method
Funding token—used to fund sender's prepaid instrument
Sender token—used to make payments from the prepaid balance
You can use the FundPrepaid operation to fund a prepaid balance. A prepaid instrument is always created with a zero balance. Amazon FPS provides a funding token to fund the prepaid balance and you must explicitly use the funding token to fund the prepaid instrument.
As explained in the Using Prepaid Instruments and Balances section a funding token is an output of the prepaid instrument installation pipeline. The funding token is a sender token installed on a sender's account and contains references to the payment method and instrument that should be used to fund the prepaid balance.
The FundPrepaid operation accepts the following parameters as inputs:
Funding amount
Prepaid instrument
Funding token
For the complete list of parameters, see FundPrepaid request parameters section.
The FundPrepaid operation does the following:
Transfers money from the sender's payment instrument (specified in the funding token), to the recipient's account balance. The fee charged is deducted from the funding amount and deposited into the recipient's account balance.
The sender's prepaid balance is credited with the funding amount.
You can use either credit cards or the bank account to fund tokens:
![[Note]](images/note.png) | Note |
|---|---|
It takes 4 days for the sender to receive funds in a bank account transfer. |
Example
FundPrepaid operation transfers $9.50 into recipient's account and credits $10 into sender's prepaid balance.Handling the FundPrepaid operation response is similar to handling a Pay operation response. See the Using Tokens for Making Payments section for more information on how you can handle responses.
