Letting your customers sign in to My account

Customer sign-in (My account) gives each of your customers a private page on your payment site where they can see their invoices and payments, print invoices and receipts, manage the cards and bank accounts you keep on file for them, and see their scheduled payments. It is a paid add-on: subscribe under Integrations (the current price is shown there). Paying an invoice from its link still works with no sign-in at all.

Turning it on. Open your merchant account and choose Customer sign-in. Switch the page on, choose what customers may do, and save. Your customers sign in at the address shown on that page (it ends in a long private key). Copy it into your website or emails. If it ever gets out of hand, Make a new address replaces it and the old one stops working at once.

What customers may do. By default they can view everything, pay open invoices, and add, remove or choose a default card or bank account (adding always happens on the gateway's own secure page; PayMidWare never sees a card number there). You can also let them change which saved method a schedule uses, edit their name, phone and billing address, and pause, resume or cancel their own scheduled payments. Anything you leave off is hidden or becomes a request: for example, a customer who cannot cancel a schedule can send you a note asking you to.

How they sign in. They type the email address you have on file and we email a six-digit code that works once for ten minutes. If you allow passwords, they can also set one (at least 10 characters) from their Security page and use it instead. We always give the same answer whether or not an address is on file, so the page cannot be used to find out who your customers are. Sensitive changes (removing a method, changing an email address, setting a password) ask for a fresh code, and the customer is emailed a notice of every change.

Who sees what. A person sees the records of your active customers whose email address matches theirs. If two customer records share one address, the person sees both together. A customer you switch off cannot sign in, and a session already open ends on its next click. Switch a customer off, or send them an invitation, from the My account card on their customer page.

Inviting customers. Send one customer an invitation from their page, or choose Invite everyone on the Customer sign-in page. That sends one email per address (up to 500 at a time), skips customers with no email or switched off, and does not email an address again within a day. The pay page, invoice emails and scheduled payment reminders also carry a View my account link when this is on.

Good to know. Sessions end after 30 minutes of no activity, or 8 hours at most. Customers can sign out everywhere from their Security page. Payment history shows payments, refunds, cancellations and declined attempts with no gateway details. Customers can download a statement (one PDF of their invoices and payments for any period up to a year, with what is still owed) from their Payments page. The Documents page lists the documents you have sent them to sign; once a customer has signed one they can open it, read the exact text they agreed to, and download the signed PDF, and each download is added to the document's timeline. A document still waiting for a signature is signed from the link in the email, and documents sent by PayMidWare itself are never shown there.

Remember this device. Off until you switch it on, on the Customer sign-in page. When it is on, a customer can tick Remember this device for 30 days after signing in with a code, and that browser then signs in without a new code. It still asks for a code before a sensitive change. Signing out, Sign out everywhere, setting a new password or changing the email address ends every remembered device, and the customer can forget them from their Security page. Do not recommend it on shared computers.

For your software provider. If your payment software is built on PayMidWare, it can send a customer it has already signed in straight to their account with a one-use link that works for five minutes. Ask your provider whether they offer a link to My account.