Category: (2) TAM Application Type
Application Identifier: 5.19.2
Maturity Level: 4
The Balance Management applications are responsible for activities related to the creation and maintenance of the balances of a customer and/or a subscriber. Balances may be shared (e.g. between subscribers in a hierarchy). Balance can be managed at most granule level for example at the level of subscription. These processes will be required to support both batch and real-time processing.Types of balances include: Monetary balances o Prepaid balances o Postpaid balances Non-monetary balances (e.g. free minutes, WAP-only quota, tokens, etc.)
The balance management applications will support the definition of policies per balance or balance type. Policies include:
Minimum Allowable Balance limit (e.g. balance must remain above zero). There could be more possibilities for business customer and it will be driven through policy and rule.
Balance expiration dates.
Balance thresholds actions and notifications. It should support granule level of balance threshold management where balance can be managed at customer subscribed service level.
Roll-over and cyclic policies.
Balance management operations include:
Unit reservation from a balance for a specified interval (session). Unused units are credited back into the balance when the session is released.
Release of reserved unit
Balance prioritization based on policy/rules
Balance inquiry.
Support for multiple simultaneous sessions that affect a common balance.
Replenishment (top-up, recharge) of prepaid balances from postpaid accounts (e.g. credit card or credit balance).
Enforcement of spending-limits and credit-control for postpaid balances. Notification and action on credit-limit based on policies/rule which could vary from customer to customer.
Splitting charges between multiple balances.
Notifications upon balances reaching a configured threshold (e.g. spending limit support).
Credit and debit operations resulting from application of a value calculated by Charge Calculation processes.
Application of a payment to a balance.
Communication of balance information to the financial systems (e.g. General Ledger, Accounts Receivable) within the enterprise.
Exposed
Contracts
Balance
replenishment - Allow the use of
various payments to affect a balance means including vouchers, e-Transaction,
Direct debit, Credit card or any other form of payment. The contract may be used by many
channels: self-service via an IVR
system, SMS/USSD, ATM, a web application, or with CSR assistance.
Balance
consumption Allow various
processes to reduce a balance.
Balance
creation Establish a new
balance for a customer.
Balance
inquiry.
Balance adjustments.
Service-consumption reservation and authorization-authorizes the
request coming from the service-controller based on the customer and subscriber
eligibility for the service (e.g. based on customer-hierarchy, purchased offers,
credit limit parameters, bill shock
prevention regulation, etc. ) and on the current balance available. Note:
this is possibly a component of a larger scope authorization contract which can
involve data such as identity authorization, location, etc
Consumed
Contracts