Do I need a customer database at my merchant services provider?

coreFORCE maintains data on all of your customers, including identifiers that will link them to their payment accounts on your merchant services provider.  For security reasons, coreFORCE does not keep any payment data for credit cards, bank accounts, etc.  All of that data is passed directly to the merchant services provider without being stored in coreFORCE.

In addition to the customer data stored in coreFORCE, you may also choose to turn on a customer database that your merchant service provider offers.  There are three reasons that you may need this:

1. If you want to have your customers automatically billed with recurring payments (e.g. for membership fees or a monthly subscription), you must have the customer database turned on.
2. If you want to wait until you have shipped your customers' orders before you charge their payment method (in order to avoid transaction fees for changed and cancelled orders), you must have the customer database turned on.
3. If you need to research errors with customer payment methods (e.g. why did my recurring payment fail?), it is helpful to have the customer database so that you can research errors directly on the merchant services portal.

If you are getting error #8498, it means that coreFORCE is expecting to find the customer database but not finding it.  In that case, you need to do one of two things:

1. Contact your merchant services provider and ask them to turn on the customer database for you.*
2. In coreFORCE, in Payments > Merchant Accounts, check the box for "No customer database" for your default merchant account. 

* The process to set up the customer database will vary depending on the merchant service provider.  For Authorize.net, this can be done from the merchant portal without contacting customer service:
https://support.authorize.net/s/article/How-can-I-sign-up-for-the-Customer-Information-Manager-CIM