How Payments Work

QPilot enables a flexible & secure customer experience for recurring payments and automatically processes payments for repeat orders & deliveries.

By default, a payment method is required to process a customer's Scheduled Order.
Merchants that do not require a payment method for order processing should see our help guide for using the optional "Other" Payment Type.

QPilot integrates directly with your Payment Gateway to process payments when Scheduled Orders are due to process. Each Payment Gateway is securely integrated with your QPilot Site and payments are processed securely with your Payment Gateway using encrypted (or "tokenized") payment id's.

Connecting Payment Gateways with Your QPilot Site

To connect your Payment Gateway with your QPilot Site, please find your Payment Gateway in our help guides and follow the steps to securely add and connect your Payment Gateway.

You can add and connect multiple Payment Gateways to the same QPilot Site, but only one account for each Payment Gateway can be added.

For example, you can add & connect Stripe and PayPal to the same QPilot Site, but you cannot add 2 Stripe accounts to the same QPilot Site. If your business does have multiple accounts for the same Payment Gateway, you may consider setting up a separate QPilot Site.

Saved Payment Methods for Customers

Customers save payment methods securely within your Payment Gateway. When customers save a payment method with your Payment Gateway, your gateway will "tokenize" the payment as an encrypted Id. This process of "tokenizing" the payment method ensures that the actual payment information (like the actual credit card number) is never exposed, and cannot be used by any other service than your Payment Gateway.

QPilot uses the tokenized Id (or in some cases, multiple tokenized Id's) to process payment methods that are saved by your customers directly with your Payment Gateway during order processing. For more detailed information about this order processing, pelase see our help guide for Processing Cycles.

How Merchants Manage Saved Payment Methods

While payment methods are normally managed directly by your customers, merchants have several ways to help their customers update & manage their saved payment methods:

Directly in the Payment Gateway

Merchants can always view and manage saved payments by logging into their Payment Gateway to add, update or delete a saved payment method for their customer.

Editing a Scheduled Order

Merchants can help their customers make changes to payment methods used for each Scheduled Order by editing a Scheduled Order in their QPilot Site (QPilot Merchant Center > Site Dashboard >> Scheduled Orders).

Editing a Customer

Merchants can add or remove existing saved payment methods to/from a customer's account in their QPilot Site (QPilot Merchant Center > Site Dashboard >> Customers).

How a Merchant Adds or Removes a Saved Payment Method for a Customer:

1. Visit QPilot Merchant Center > Site Dashboard >> Customers
2. Find the Customer that you want to add or remove a payment method for and select "edit"
3. Scroll down to the "Payment Methods" section of the Edit Customer view to Add or Remove a payment method

QPilot, integrates directly with your payment gateway to process QPilot Scheduled Orders.  This enables QPilot to manage and process payment methods directly with your payment gateway so that your connected site's orders created from processing a QPilot Scheduled Order include payment information.

How payment is processed for a Scheduled Order:

1. When a Scheduled Order starts processing, QPilot creates an Order in your connected site via the QPilot API.

2. Your connected site sends the Order data back to QPilot.

3. QPilot sends the complete Order details to the Payment Gateway associated with the Payment Method on the Scheduled Order.

4. The Payment Gateway responds to QPilot with the result; basically a "Success" or "Declined" response.

5. If the payment is successful, QPilot updates the Order in your connected site with the payment details and the Order Status changes (such as from "Pending Payment" to "Processing"). 

   • The Scheduled Order status remains "Active" and the Scheduled Order data is updated to reflect a new Next Occurrence Date, cycle count and Lifetime Value (LTV).
   • Note: In the case of "Authorize Only" transactions, the status is usually changed to "On Hold"

6. If the payment is unsuccessful (a "Decline" for example), QPilot will update the created order in your connected site and origin Scheduled Order to a "Failed" status. The reason for the failure is recorded and communicated to the merchant in QPilot Merchant Center > Scheduled Orders and to the QPilot Site Contacts via email.

   • You can learn more about processing errors and how to resolve them here:
   • You can learn more about failed order notifications here: '

FAQ: How do customers update the billing address for a saved payment method?

When a customer updates their billing address on payment methods saved to a Scheduled Order, it is recommended they create a new payment method in your connected site.

Why is this the "recommended" way to update billing addresses on payment methods?

When payment methods are saved (aka tokenized) the current user's billing address is used. The reason creating a new payment method is the recommended way to update saved payment method billing addresses is this allows the payment method to be re-tokenized with the user's current saved billing address, ensuring their billing address attached to the payment method is current.