Payment Processing Overview

Spark CRM provides a robust payment processing system designed to maximize approval rates and recover failed transactions. This section covers the key components of the payment infrastructure.

Payment Architecture

Spark CRM’s payment system is built from several components that work together:

Customer Payment
      ↓
  Campaign
      ↓
Payment Orchestrator (optional)
      ↓
   Gateway
      ↓
Payment Processor
      ↓
Transaction Result
      |
      +-- Cascade Profile (immediate retry on a backup gateway, same checkout)
      |
      +-- Decline Salvage (delayed retries; initial and rebill charges only)

Payment Flow

1. Order Created: Customer places an order through your campaign
2. Gateway Selection: The system determines which gateway to use (directly assigned or via orchestrator)
3. Transaction Processing: Payment is submitted to the gateway/processor
4. Result Handling: Success creates a completed transaction. A decline is first retried in-checkout if a cascade profile applies, and only a still-declined initial or rebill charge is queued for decline salvage (upsells are never salvaged, and a campaign can opt out)

Key Components

Payment Gateways

Payment gateways connect Spark CRM to payment processors like Stripe, Authorize.net, and NMI.

Key features:

• Multiple gateway support for redundancy
• Connection testing and monitoring
• Monthly processing limits
• Last transaction tracking

Supported gateways:

• NMI (Network Merchants)
• Stripe
• Authorize.net
• Finix
• ConvesioPay
• PayNetWorx
• Highwire Payments
• Highwire Payments V2
• Bulletproof Checkout
• Big Dogs Payments
• Swiparas
• Breeze (built-in 3D Secure — see Breeze 3D Secure Checkout)
• BridgePay
• Sandbox (Testing)

Learn more about Payment Gateways

Hosted card form

Collect card data in a PCI-friendly iframe on your own checkout pages, then charge with a single-use token via the Checkout API.

Learn more about Hosted Payments

Alternative Payment Methods

Alternative payment methods let you accept payments beyond traditional credit card gateways, including PayPal Wallet, external/offline payments, and more.

Key features:

• PayPal Wallet with redirect-based checkout flow
• Whop embedded checkout with Whop-managed subscriptions
• Reference transactions for seamless upsells and subscriptions
• External payments for manually confirmed offline transactions
• PayPal payment sources are vaulted automatically on a successful order, enabling later upsells and rebills
• Connection testing with a pass/fail result and a last-tested timestamp

Supported types:

• PayPal Wallet — Full API integration with vaulting support
• Whop — Embedded checkout, merchant of record, Whop-owned billing schedule
• External Payment — Manual confirmation for offline payments
• Cash App, Zelle, Venmo, Bank Transfer — Placeholder types you can create records for; no processing integration exists yet
• Cryptocurrency — Coming soon

Learn more about Alternative Payment Methods

Whop Checkout

Whop runs its own embedded checkout on your funnel page as the merchant of record, with Spark CRM recording the order, subscriptions, fulfillment, and reporting around it.

Key features:

• Embedded checkout — card data never reaches Spark CRM
• One-click upsells against the payment method Whop saved
• Whop-managed subscriptions with cancel, pause, resume, and reactivate proxied from Spark CRM
• Webhook-confirmed payments, renewals, refunds, and disputes

Learn more about Whop Checkout

Payment Orchestrators

Payment orchestrators intelligently route transactions across multiple gateways to optimize approval rates.

Key features:

• Multiple routing algorithms
• Per-gateway monthly caps and decline/fail limits that pull a gateway out of rotation
• Automatic failover on gateway hard failures — connection, timeout, or authentication errors — when Enable Failover is turned on. Ordinary card declines are not failed over; use a Cascade Profile to retry a decline on a backup gateway
• Custom routing rules

Routing algorithms:

• Highest Approval Rate - Routes to gateway with best historical performance
• Round Robin - Evenly distributes transactions across gateways
• Ruleset Only - Uses custom rules exclusively

Learn more about Payment Orchestrators

Cascade Profiles

Cascade profiles retry a declined payment on backup gateways immediately, inside the same checkout, before the customer leaves.

Key features:

• Per-gateway ordered list of backup gateways
• Scoped to initials, rebills, upsells, or any combination
• Up to three cascade attempts per transaction
• Controls for sticky MIDs, forced gateways, and orchestrator precedence

Learn more about Cascade Profiles

Decline Mappings

Decline mappings rewrite the raw decline messages your gateways return into your own customer-friendly wording, with an optional custom decline code for API responses. Match either on your own message text or on a predefined decline reason.

Key features:

• Predefined decline reasons to match against — Do Not Honor, Suspected Fraud, Insufficient Funds, Invalid CVV, Lost Card, Stolen Card, and more
• Team-wide mappings that apply to declines from every gateway (mappings cannot be scoped to a single gateway)
• Decline analytics

Learn more about Decline Mappings

Decline Salvage

Decline salvage automatically retries declined initial and rebill charges on a delay to recover lost revenue.

Key features:

• Automated retry scheduling
• Alternative gateway routing
• Configurable retry rules
• Recovery analytics

Learn more about Decline Salvage

Best Practices

Gateway Setup

1. Start with sandbox - Test thoroughly before going live
2. Add multiple gateways - Provides redundancy and optimization opportunities
3. Set processing limits - The per-orchestrator monthly cap and the gateway daily limit take a gateway out of rotation once reached. The gateway monthly limit drives usage tracking and capacity alerts rather than a hard stop, and no limit applies to a campaign pointed directly at a gateway
4. Test connections regularly - Catch credential issues early

Orchestrator Configuration

1. Use orchestrators for multiple gateways - Let the system optimize routing
2. Start with Highest Approval Rate - Good default for most merchants
3. Monitor gateway performance - Use the Payments report to spot weak MIDs, then tighten a gateway’s decline and fail limits or its monthly cap on the orchestrator, or remove it from the pool
4. Configure fallback gateways - Turn on Enable Failover so hard failures re-route to another gateway

Decline Recovery

1. Enable decline salvage - Recover revenue from declines that would otherwise be lost; track actual recovery in the Decline Salvage report
2. Configure appropriate delays - Give banks time between retries
3. Exclude hard declines - Don’t retry fraud or stolen cards
4. Monitor salvage effectiveness - Track recovery rates

Quick Reference

Related Reports

• Payment Report - Gateway performance and approval rates
• Salvage Report - Decline recovery metrics
• Risk Report - Chargeback and fraud analysis

Next Steps

Start by adding your first gateway to begin processing payments.