What are customers, accounts and cards?
In order to retrieve information for account holders on the FirstVision system, either the Customer number, the Account number, or the Card number will be required.
An established account typically consists of the following:
- Account (also known as an Account Base Segment)
- Contains information such as credit limit, billing cycle, status and block codes, pricing controls and direct debit details.
- Identified by a unique account number assigned by the client, or automatically generated by the system.
- Multiple Accounts may be established for and associated with a single Customer.
- Typically, a statement is produced every month for an account.
- Customer (also known as a Name and Address record)
- Contains customer demographic information about the customer (owner) and "secondary" (co-owner, e.g. spouse), such as name, address, email address, telephone numbers, date of birth, identification information, and employment information.
- Identified by a unique customer number assigned by the client, or automatically generated by the system.
- In addition to the primary customer, up to three additional customers may also be established for and associated with a single account for the purposes of storing information on associated parties, such as a Power of Attorney and guarantors.
- One customer may also be established for and associated with a single Account base Segment record for storing an alternate address.
- One customer may also be established for and associated with a single Account for storing a correspondence address.
- Card (also known as an embosser)
- Contains information about the card or plastic, such as name embossed on the card, expiry date, type of plastic stock used to create the card, and authorisation restrictions for the card.
- The card number (also known as the PAN) is the number that is printed on the physical plastic and is subject to strict privacy rules. As a result, some clients will not store this number and can retrieve any card data from FirstVision as a masked number.
- Multiple cards can exist for one account. For example, there can be additional cards for other members of one household, that all sit under one account. These additional cards can be linked to their own customer, where this information is necessary.
In addition, an account will have multiple Plan Segments:
- Plan Segments are not created as part of the new account set-up process. The system automatically generates these when particular sale transactions post to an account.
- Each plan is a certain 'type'; for example, retail, cash or balance transfer. It contains monetary information and other details about transactions that fit that time, including interest rate, overrides and deferment options, plan balance and billed-not-paid components.
- Each Plan Segment assigned to an account is uniquely identified by a combination of a 5-digit number and a record number.
