This article walks you through the steps needed to set up Slate Payments in your database.

Before you begin

Required reading

Before you begin, see Charging Payments in Slate Using Interactions and Activities to learn how Slate uses activities and interactions to facilitate the payment process.

Mixing and matching payment providers

Slate lets you configure any payment gateway to apply only to particular payment fee types (that is, payment account prompts), or particular rounds or periods, or both.

For example, you might have Slate Payments collect your application fee and then use another, external payment provider to collect an enrollment deposit.

If you choose to go this route, pay special attention to the instructions in Step 3.

📖 Further reading: Migrating to Slate Payments

Step 1: Add Permissions

Assign the Payment Gateway Setup permission to a trusted user. This is an exclusive permission, meaning it must be explicitly granted. It cannot be inherited from any role, including the Administrator role.

Restrict using this permission as much as possible; someone who has this permission can enter bank account data to route payments to a destination account. To help audit this process, we automatically email your Slate security administrators whenever a new destination bank account is added.

Step 2: Create Deposit Account

Creating a Slate Payments Deposit Account

A deposit account represents the “end point” of the payment process, and is a holding account where the collected funds end up before being transferred to your external bank account.

📝 Note

If you are attempting to add a new deposit account located in Japan or the UAE, please reach out to us via a Support ticket. Non-standard accounts may require manual intervention from Technolutions staff to help create the account or seed certain information.

To add a Slate Payments deposit account:

1. Click Database on the Slate navigation bar. The Database page appears.

2. In the Payments section, select Slate Payments.  The Slate Payments page appears.

   

3. Click New Account. A Deposit Account popup appears.

   

4. Provide the required description, contact, banking, and verification information.

For details regarding the individual fields, refer to the Details on Account Fields section of this article.

📝 Note

When you use Slate Payments, we create a “custom connect account” on our Stripe Connect payments platform on your behalf. At this time, we are not able to support linking Slate Payments with a previously existing, standalone Stripe account; the managed Connected Account must be used.

Using Slate Payments requires agreement to the Stripe Terms of Service, but Technolutions manages the relationship with Stripe, and all confidentiality and data security provisions included in the Technolutions MSA continue to apply.

After the initial save, you will be asked for further verification information, including the institution's official name, EIN number, organization representatives, and more. A Stripe-hosted form will handle this final phase of the account onboarding process. Additional verification issues or messages will be displayed there.

Organization representative

When setting up a Slate Payments account, a Slate administrator (or another designated representative) must enter personal information for an Organization Representative or Executive.

Providing personal information about an institution representative is required for the back-end payment processor to comply with regulations of the Office of Foreign Asset Control and "Know your customer" laws intended to prevent money laundering and other misuse. There are no responsibilities and there is no liability involved. The identity information is only used during the initial verification. The organization representative will not be contacted.

📝 Note

This information is recorded at Stripe (on a Stripe page), not the Slate database. No Slate users can access this information.

In many cases, Stripe asks that an executive of the organization acting as a representative to comply with the federal Beneficial Ownership Rule that states, "covered financial institutions must identify each beneficial owner by obtaining their name, date of birth, address, and identifying number (such as a social security number or other identifying number permissible under the CIP rule), and verify their identities."

Test Mode Account

🔔Important! "Test Mode Accounts"

In most cases, the Test Mode Account checkbox should not be selected. Instead, you should use your real bank routing and account number (testing your setup in a “test configuration” as described in Step 3 of this article).

A typical situation for using a “test mode account” is when you need to see the process before deciding on adopting Slate Payments. A “test mode account” can never be changed to production mode, and is only ever used for testing.

Real deposit accounts can only be created in your production database, but they can be “migrated” to the test environment (by provisioning a new Test environment) and used there in a “test configuration,” if desired.

When creating a Test Mode account, you must use the following test bank account:

• Routing number: 110000000

• Account number: 000123456789

You must still step through the Stripe-based account verification and supply all information about the organization and the individual representative (even if you just use test information: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/testing#verification).

Please see the following section for further details on specific fields and options displayed during this step.

Details on Account Fields

In the Banking and Payment Information section, the value entered in the Short Name to Appear on Bank Transfers field will appear on the payer’s credit card statement. Making this name as clear as possible will help prevent disputed charges resulting from not understanding the payment, so include an abbreviated version of your institution’s name.

Statement Details

Banking and Payment Information

Step 3: Connect Payment Account Prompts to Deposit Accounts

Once you have created one (or more) deposit accounts, you must connect each to a particular payment_account prompt value (or make it the default for all payments).

• Person-Scoped Payments: Deposit accounts for person-scoped payments are connected on the Person-Scoped Payment Configuration page. (Database > Payments > Person-Scoped Payment Configuration).

• Application-Scoped Payments: Deposit accounts for application-scoped payments are connected through the Application Editor:

1. Click Database on the Slate navigation bar. The Database page appears.

2. In the Applications section, select Application Editor. The Application Editor page appears.

3. Select the desired application (round and period) configuration. If you have multiple applications configured, you must perform this configuration step for each one (but you can use the same deposit account for multiple applications or payment accounts). If you do not have any applications listed, you might need to use the Slate Template Library to add a Slate-hosted application file (base.xml file), even though you may not be using a Slate-hosted application otherwise.

4. When editing a particular configuration, a list of application pages appears, followed by a list of modules. Locate the item with a Part ID of “payment,” followed by other items for “payment_” plus various possible payment accounts (these will correspond to the payment_account prompt values that you have added to your database) To configure a default (or fallback) where all payments to go to the same deposit account, click the "payment" listing.

5. To configure Slate Payments for a particular payment account prompt value, click the listing for that account. For example, to configure the deposit account for application fees, click the "payment_Application Fee" listing (see also the note at the end of this article). The module details appear.
   

   Note

   To add new payment accounts, add new prompt values with a key of "payment_account".

6. Click Payment Providers. An Edit Configuration popup appears.
   

   

   

Set Deposit Account to ‘test configuration’

In the configuration pop-up from step-6 above:

1. Select Slate Test for Payment Provider. Additional options appear to provide a Slate payment deposit account (established in the steps described earlier in this article) and its associated settings.

2. Select the appropriate account for Slate Payment Deposit Account.

3. Configure the remaining settings as desired, such as enabling checking account and card payments.

4. Consider adding custom text as dispute evidence that will be sent to the payer's bank or card issuer should a user dispute a payment of this type.

5. Click Save.

Slate Payments is now enabled in a test configuration, enabling you to simulate the collection of test payments.

Step 4: Test the Payment Configuration

To test the payment configuration, add a Payment Due activity in an appropriate payment account to a test application. You can do this manually, or (even better) you can set up one or more payment rules and test that part of the process as well. (For example, create a rule that adds an Application Fee Payment Due activity when the application is submitted, and then submit an application for a test applicant.)

Once you have a test applicant with a Payment Due activity, go to their Application Status page and click the Submit Payment link (or click the payment link in the activity). This will take you to the payment page.

While your payment configuration is set to "Slate Test", you can make payments using test credit cards or bank accounts.

Test Credit Cards

You can test a declined card by using the Visa number 4000000000000002. For all test credit cards, you may enter any expiration date in the future, and any card verification code you like.

To test ACH/Check payments, use the routing number 110000000, and the account number 000123456789. To test a failed check payment, use the account number 000222222227.

When a payment succeeds, you should see a Payment Received activity on the student account, and the "Submit Payment" link should no longer appear on the status page.

Step 5: Set Deposit Accounts to Production Mode

Moving to Production mode

When you have verified that payments are working as expected, you can switch one or more of your Slate Payments Deposit Accounts to be used in production mode. In the Application Editor (or Person-Scoped Payment Configuration), repeat the procedure in Step 3, but this time select the payment provider as "Slate" instead of "Slate Test."

As part of your go-live planning, review the payment system emails configuration and made any required changes. For more information, refer to the System Emails for Slate Payments Knowledge Base article.

Payment Provider: Slate

Consider conducting a real-money test transaction to verify that everything is operating as expected and that funds arrive in the correct account.

System Notifications for Slate Payments

Slate will automatically send notification emails as they relate to Slate Payments based on a set of triggers. Many of these mailings can be customized. Some emails must be explicitly configured using Deliver to enable sending. Refer to the System Emails for Slate Payments Knowledge Base article for details regarding the content of automatically configured mailings, and the cases where automatic Slate Payments emails can be customized.

Migrating (fully or partially) from an existing external payment integration to Slate Payments

Refer to the Migrating to Slate Payments Knowledge Base article for information regarding the migration of external payment providers to Slate Payments.