E-Commerce in Genius+

Introduction

One of Genius’ defining features is its ability to allow your learners to complete payment when they attempt to enroll in a learning opportunity published in the Course Catalog By making it possible to collect payment from learners directly and as part of the registration process, Genius makes it possible for your organization to turn its e-Learning initiative into a source of income – which may be important if you are designing learning content for hundreds or even thousands of learners.

E-Commerce in Genius+: How it Works

When your learners pay for their courses or learning paths through Genius+, Genius+ gives them the option of selecting a payment method. The payment method default options include:

• ‘Charge my Department – which charges the account of the Department or Affiliation that this Learner belongs to;
• ‘Mail a Check’ – which provides instructions for learners to complete payment offline, confirming their registration into the course once their payment has been received;
• Finally, ‘Pay via Website’ – which makes it possible for a Learner to input their credit card information and then pay for their courses through a credit card.

Any of these options can be renamed to fit the needs of your organization, but the logic in the code for each of them remain the same. So, the only payment option that will redirect to the payment gateway, if you have one, is the Pay via Website option. None of the other options can or should be renamed to show a redirect to your payment gateway.

What happens when learners pay for their courses in Genius+?

Learners can select their payment gateway when they check out with their selected courses, as shown below: 

When learners select the pay online option, learners input their credit card information within Genius. Once this information has been provided, a series of steps take place between Genius, your financial institution, and your payment gateway – which are described below:

1. Genius sends your learners’ credit card information to the Payment Gateway through an SSL encrypted pathway.
2. Genius then does not store any credit card information about your learners. Every time your learners want to complete a purchase within Genius, they need to input their credit card information again.
3. Your payment gateway processes the payment and sends a confirmation back to Genius that the payment was successful.
4. Genius registers the learners in the section and they can begin completing the learning opportunity as soon as it is made available to them.
5. If the payment was successful, the payment gateway credits your account or your financial institution with the amount paid by the learner (minus any applicable commissions on their end).
6. If the payment was not successful, the payment gateway sends a confirmation message explaining the error back to Genius, who relays this message back to the learner attempting to register.
7. Successful attempts to register and pay for a course are then logged by Genius in its ledger, one of the Reports available out of the box for Administrators of our Solution.

As far as your learners are concerned, the payment process is completely transparent. Your learners never leave the Genius environment at any point during the payment process, and their credit card information is secure at all times. The types of credit cards and payment types that can be processed by Genius are highly dependent on the payment gateway you choose to use.