How to pay the fee for a silver or gold competency
Appropriate roles: MPN partner admin | Account admin
This article shows you how to:
Learn the requirements, fees, and benefits
To learn the requirements and fees for attaining silver and gold competencies, read See which partner offer is right for you.
To learn more about the competencies available, the benefits of attaining a silver or gold competency, and their unique requirements, see Competencies.
To get detailed information about the product licenses included with competencies, download the License Tables for Competencies. (The PDF file is saved to your default download folder when you select the link.)
Subscribe and pay for a membership
Prerequisites
Before you can subscribe to a silver or gold competency, you must:
Be a partner who is a member of the Microsoft Partner Network.
Meet the requirements to attain the silver or gold competencies.
Be a Global admin or MPN partner admin in Partner Center.
If you don't have one of those roles, you won't have access to some of the Partner Center pages described in this article. If that happens, contact your Global admin and ask them to assign you the appropriate role.
Subscribe and pay
To subscribe and pay for a silver or gold competency membership:
Using the credentials for your work account at your organization, sign in to the Partner Center dashboard.
Select the Membership workspace and then select Membership offers.
Under Offers available for purchase, select the Silver membership or Gold membership associated with your particular competency.
Select Subscribe.
Note
If you haven't met the requirements for a silver or gold competency, you won't be able to subscribe to a silver or gold membership or pay the associated competency fee. Also, if you are already a gold competency partner, the incremental benefits for a silver competency are awarded to you automatically. If that is the case, the option to pay the silver competency fee won't be available.
On the Purchase details page, review and confirm your details.
To learn more updating your company’s Tax ID information, see Add a VAT ID to your billing profile.
To learn more about changing your company’s Bill to/Sold to company address, see Buy a Microsoft Action Pack for the first time.
At the bottom-left of the page, locate the Select your payment preference section. Select either Credit card or Electronic Bank Transfer, then select Next. See the following sections for further steps associated with either option.
Pay with a credit card
To make a credit card payment for a silver or gold competency membership:
If you selected Credit card for the payment method in the preceding section, the credit card details page appears.
Select the agreement link close to the top of this page and review the MPN Offer Purchase Terms and Conditions on behalf of your company. The agreement tells you important information about your billing account, renewal, refund eligibility, and taxes.
Enter your credit card details in the related boxes and then select Pay.
Your payment will be collected through a third-party, secure payment gateway.
Note
Make sure that the address and ZIP code you enter on the credit card details page match the billing address of the credit card. If your legal entity address is different from the credit card billing address, do not use the legal entity address.
As soon as the transaction is completed, your silver or gold competency subscription is activated.
Pay with an electronic bank transfer
To pay with an electronic bank transfer:
If you selected Electronic bank transfer as your preferred method of payment, you'll see the Review purchase details page.
Select the agreement link toward the bottom of this page and review the MPN Offer Purchase Terms and Conditions on behalf of your company. This agreement has important information about your billing account, renewal, refund eligibility, and taxes.
Review the bank transfer details you'll need.
In the Your selected purchase area, note the amount due to Microsoft and the currency fee. You'll need to transfer that amount in that currency from your bank account.
When you've entered all the information required, select Submit.
Note
Your Order number and MPN ID appear when you successfully submit the order. Make a note of this information. You will need it later to complete your bank transfer.
If your submission was successful, you'll see a confirmation page. After you complete the electronic transfer from your bank, you'll need to return to this page to upload your proof of payment.
Complete the electronic transfer from your bank account. Make sure to:
Include both the Order number and MPN ID in your electronic bank transfer reference details.
Transfer the amount due (in the currency noted earlier) to the Microsoft bank account shown in the prior page’s Wire transfer instructions area.
After your bank confirms the transaction, take a photo of the bank confirmation as proof. Make sure the bank confirmation proof document shows details about:
- The date the electronic bank transfer payment occurred
- The Microsoft bank account used to receive your electronic transfer
- The transfer amount shown in correct currency
- Your Order number and MPN ID number
See the next section for steps to upload your proof of electronic bank transfer payment document.
Upload proof of an electronic funds transfer
If you pay with an electronic funds transfer, you must upload proof of payment to Partner Center.
To upload proof of payment:
Sign in to the Partner Center dashboard, select the Membership workspace, then select Membership offers.
In the Purchased offers list, locate your offer. Then, in the Action column for that offer, select Upload payment proof.
On the details page, find the Payment proof field. Select Browse to locate and upload your proof document to Partner Center.
Complete the information in the other boxes related to your recent electronic funds transfer transaction, such as Payment date, Paid to account number, and Transaction/Ref no.
A message may appear telling you that your request was successfully completed.
After the payment is successfully completed, your purchase typically appears as active between 48 and 72 hours after payment reaches Microsoft’s bank account. The entire process can take up to a week to complete.
If you provide the necessary information in your electronic bank transfer reference details (such as, Order number and MPN ID) and upload proof of payment to Partner Center, the payment might be activated sooner.
If the payment process isn't fully completed within 30 days of your order creation date, the status of your order changes to Expired. If your order is Expired, you'll have to create a new order from Partner Center directly, but without having to send the payment again.
Cancel an order and change the payment method
You might decide later to change your payment method. For example, you might decide to use a credit card instead of an electronic bank transfer. Or, you may have an unactioned electronic bank transfer order created in the system.
To change your payment preferences for an existing order, you first need to cancel the order, then repurchase it using your preferred payment method.
To cancel an existing, unactioned electronic bank transfer and change your payment preferences:
Sign in to the Partner Center dashboard, select the Membership workspace, and then select Membership offers.
In the Purchased offers list, locate the offer that you want to cancel.
In the Action column for the offer, select Cancel Order.
Follow the remaining steps to cancel the order.
Refer to earlier sections of this article to create a new order with new payment preferences, based on one of the silver or gold membership offers available to you.
Get a 25% discount when upgrading from silver to gold
If your organization has an active silver competency and has met the requirements for the associated gold competency, you're eligible to upgrade at a 25 percent discount.
The new gold anniversary date will be one year from the date of purchase. You'll get full gold benefits.
Note
There are a few exceptions to this upgrade discount. If you had a silver membership offer and then used the 25 percent gold membership discount to upgrade to a gold membership offer, you won't be eligible for a silver refund. This is true even if you paid for your silver membership within 30 days and have not yet used the related benefits.
To see where your 25 percent discount is applied:
Sign in to the Partner Center dashboard, select the Membership workspace and then select Membership offers.
Under Offers available for purchase, look for a gold membership. If you've previously attained and paid for a silver membership, the gold membership amount will be adjusted to reflect the 25 percent discount.
Select Subscribe in the gold membership that has the discount. Your purchase details page will also show the discount for your selected purchase.
Select Next to complete the purchase and receive the discount.
Next steps
Learn more about competencies, their benefits, and unique requirements.