Identifying a Payment Beneficiary
Proxy-based Payments
The PayShap scheme supports the pay-by-proxy method of identifying the beneficiary for a payment.
For an inbound payment in the Enterprise Payments Channel context, it is important to note that 'beneficiary' consists of two parts:
- The actual bank account (i.e., your merchant/pool account at your sponsor bank) into which the funds will be deposited if the payment is successful;
- The customer record that exists in your system – for example, the customer record could pertain to a wallet if you are a wallet provider, or a customer account if you are a service provider.
Pay-by-proxy allows the sender to identify the beneficiary using a proxy (referred to as a ShapID) instead of their account details. A ShapID consists of two parts:
An easily-remembered personal identifier, such as a bank account number, mobile number, account reference, invoice identifier.
A domain that identifies the beneficiary environment.
Proxy Resolution
The first step of a proxy-based payment is to ensure that the given proxy can be resolved to the appropriate beneficiary that the sender of the payment has in mind.
When Electrum receives a proxy resolution request from the PayShap scheme, the proxy must be resolved to its corresponding beneficiary details. These details are returned to the payer bank via the scheme operator and presented to the payer so that they can verify that the beneficiary name matches who they intend to pay.
Only then can the actual payment be initiated. The payer bank will automatically include the full beneficiary details that were returned during the proxy resolution step (including the real account number) along with the proxy in the payment request. All these details will then be used by Electrum to process the payment against your merchant account at the sponsor bank.
Inbound Payments-by-Proxy
For an inbound payment, when paying by proxy, the sender needs to provide the following:
- A ShapID identifier: an identifier that points to the specific customer record within your system.
- A ShapID domain: a fixed value that identifies you as a business partner participant in the PayShap space.
A domain value will be assigned to you by your sponsor bank as part of the onboarding process. This domain value is registered with the scheme operator (BankservAfrica) by your sponsor bank in order for you to participate in PayShap payment processing with the industry. Electrum and your sponsor bank will use this value to orchestrate transaction messages appropriately and to process payments against your merchant account.
Electrum can perform the proxy resolution by making an API call to your system of customer records. Note that your system must be able to do the following: store the customer's account details, allow customers to link a chosen proxy to an account/wallet via a customer-facing channel, and resolve an incoming proxy resolution request when a payment is made.
Future capability of the EPC solution will include proxy resolution using Electrum's internal Account Mirror on behalf of the business partner.
Outbound Payments-by-Proxy
For an outbound payment, when paying by proxy, you need to provide the following:
- The ShapID identifier of the person that you are paying.
- The ShapID domain of the bank at which the payee's account is based.
When you initiate a proxy-based payment, Electrum will communicate to the scheme operator to request a proxy resolution from the beneficiary's bank. The returned details can then be used to initiate the payment.
Outbound payments are not currently supported by the Enterprise Payments Channel solution, but will be supported soon.