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sonarPay Migration: Approving Your Match & Going Live

Jennifer Trower Updated by Jennifer Trower

Read Time: 5 mins

Stage 4 is the final stage of the sonarPay migration process. After you review your token matching results and resolve any unmatched payment methods, you can approve the cutover to sonarPay.

Approval allows Sonar to import the new sonarPay tokens, remove payment methods from the previous processor, and make sonarPay the active payment processor for future transactions. Once this process begins, it cannot be stopped partway through.

Prerequisites

Before approving your migration:

  • You must have completed Stage 3: The Token Transfer & Matching Process.
  • You must have reviewed your matching results.
  • You must have completed subscriber outreach for any unmatched payment methods.

Before You Approve

Approval is the point of no return in the sonarPay migration process. Once your Implementation Project Manager receives your written approval, the migration sequence begins and cannot be stopped partway through.

Before approving, confirm that you have reviewed the token matching results and completed any required subscriber outreach for unmatched payment methods.

How to Give Written Approval

Your Implementation Project Manager will send you a review email after your tokens have been created and matched.

To approve the migration, reply directly to that email with clear written approval. For example:

You have my approval to proceed with the migration.

Written approval is required because the cutover is irreversible. Verbal approval or an informal acknowledgment is not enough to begin the process.

You do not need to complete a separate form or use a portal. The email thread with your Implementation Project Manager is the official approval record. After your approval is received, your Implementation Project Manager will coordinate the migration with Sonar’s payments engineering team.

What Happens After You Approve

After approval, the migration runs in a fixed sequence.

  1. New tokens are imported: The credit card and ACH tokens that were created and matched during earlier migration stages are imported into Sonar. These become the active payment methods on your accounts.
  2. Legacy tokens are deleted: Payment method records from your previous processor are removed from Sonar. Any account with an unmatched token at this stage will no longer have a payment method on file.
  3. Your previous processor is disabled

Sonar disables the previous payment provider, and sonarPay becomes the active processor for all future transactions.

The import runs continuously once it begins and must complete without interruption. After the process is complete, your Implementation Project Manager will review the results and help address any accounts that need adjustment.

Risk 1: Unmatched Payment Methods

Unmatched payment methods are the most important item to resolve before approving your migration.

If you approve before completing outreach for unmatched accounts, those subscribers will not have a payment method on file after cutover. Sonar cannot recover unmatched tokens after cutover because no token was received for those payment methods during the tokenization process.

For subscribers on autopay, this means they must re-enter their payment information before their next billing cycle. Subscribers who are not on autopay will be prompted to enter payment details the next time they submit a payment.

Inactive accounts with unmatched cards will have those cards deleted, and no additional action is required.

Before approving, review your outreach report and confirm that active accounts with unmatched payment methods have been addressed.

Risk 2: First-Transaction Failures

Because both the payment processor and merchant descriptor are changing, some issuing banks may flag the first transaction after cutover.

This is usually temporary. Transactions may succeed after the first successful charge or on a retry. However, you may see a short-term increase in declined first attempts after go-live.

A failed automatic payment does not send the A payment failed message to the account’s contacts, so affected subscribers may not be notified automatically. Proactive outreach helps reduce missed payments and confusion during the transition.

Billing Settings to Review Before Go-Live

Before going live, review the following billing settings.

Payment Retries

Confirm that payment retries are enabled in Sonar. This allows first-attempt declines to retry automatically instead of requiring manual intervention.

To review payment retry settings, navigate to Settings > Billing > Billing Settings.

Automatic payment attempts follow the configured Attempts and Interval values. Confirm these settings are correct before your cutover date.

Late Fees

If late fees are enabled, it is recommended that you temporarily disable them until your first post-cutover billing cycle is complete.

To update this setting, navigate to Settings > Billing > Billing Settings.

This helps prevent subscribers from being charged a late fee if their first transaction declines during the transition but succeeds on retry. After the first billing cycle has cleared, you can re-enable late fees.

After Go-Live

After you are live on sonarPay, Sonar can automatically keep subscribers’ card details current through automated credit card updates.

When a card expires and the issuer renews it, or when a card is reissued with the same number, Sonar can receive the updated details and apply them to the account without requiring action from your team.

This does not apply when a subscriber’s card number changes completely, such as when a card is lost or stolen. In those cases, the subscriber must re-enter their payment information in Sonar.

Delete Expired Credit Cards Setting

In Settings > Billing > Billing Settings, you may see a Delete Expired Credit Cards option.

When using sonarPay, it is recommended that you leave this setting disabled. Because automated card updates can keep card records current when expiration dates change, deleting expired cards may remove payment methods that Sonar could otherwise update automatically.

Getting Help

If you have questions after your migration is complete, contact Sonar support through the help portal.

For billing or payment-specific questions related to your migration, contact your Implementation Project Manager using the contact information in your onboarding email thread.

What’s Next

Stage 4 is the final stage of the sonarPay migration process. After approval and cutover are complete, your instance is live on sonarPay.

How did we do?

sonarPay Disbursements: Overview

sonarPay Migration: The Token Transfer & Matching Process

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