Monthly Archives: January 2020

New Visa SaaS subscription rules for trial periods

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Effective April 18, 2020, merchants must comply with new Visa subscription billing terms and conditions. These are, once again, big changes that merchants must take action on to comply with. The payment gateway will be critical, and not all are ready to meet the new technology requirements for authorization and receipts.

Who do the new Visa rules apply to?

  • All merchants globally
  • Merchants that offer a free or discounted introductory offer as part of a subscription service

What are key Visa SaaS subscription changes?

  • Merchants must get express consent to enter into agreement for recurring billing. For example, if an online purchase, a checkbox agreeing to the terms is acceptable.
  • Notification via text, email, or other agreed upon method (not realistic for most businesses), of the subscription terms including start date, product/service details, billing frequency, billing start date, and link to cancel.
  • Notification at least 7 days in advance of the expiration

Revised sale transaction receipts are required.

  • Details to include length of trial period, introductory offer, or promotional period, and notice the cardholder will be charged unless the cardholder takes steps to cancel.
  • Date it starts, even if no payment is due, and date subsequent recurring transactions begin.
  • A link to cancel or other simple method.

Payment Gateway and settlement changes to support new Visa Authorization is required.

Many payment gateways are not yet compliant with the October 2017 stored credential mandate and they won’t be ready with this either as it is not a simple update.

  • A new descriptor, “trial” or similar, must be sent with Merchant Name field of the Clearing Record for the first transaction at the end of a trial period. This descriptor will then appear on cardholder statements, online banking etc.

“This is another huge change that most merchants will probably have difficulty complying with because of outdated payment gateways,” according to Christine Speedy, 3D Merchant Services payment gateway expert.

Merchants must make it easier to cancel recurring billing.

This is actually an extension of rules and recommended changes over the last few years. For example, if a customer signs up online, they should be able to cancel online, not have to call on the phone. The new rule now says regardless of where they signed up, retail store or other, they must be able to cancel online.

Visa expands cardholder dispute rights for subscription billing via existing condition “Misrepresentation”.

Basically, merchants need to be able to prove that the cardholder expressly opted in, and they notified customer before processing after the trial period.

Visa will actively monitor trial period compliance.

This is huge. While they don’t state how, the advances of Artificial Intelligence (AI) make if fairly easy. Additionally, merchants that are using recurring billing properly already notify the parties in financial ecosystem that they are doing recurring billing via the 2017 recurring billing stored credential changes.

What are merchants benefits to comply with Visa rules?

Merchants can expect increased authorization approvals, better rate qualification (higher profits), and increased customer satisfaction. Merchants avoid getting shut down, fined, assessed fees, penalty fees and also reduce customer service bandwidth.

DISCLAIMER: condensed and incomplete information. Information may be quickly outdated. Follow links from our Merchant Rules web page here or click here to download Visa’s PDF with review and quick reference card. Two page PDF, 675kb.

Call Christine Speedy for compliant payment gateway solutions to maximize profits and improve your customer experience. 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET for all your recurring billing and stored credential payment gateway and virtual terminal needs.

Verifone PCI 3 End of Life Terminals

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Did you know terminals have their own Payment Card Industry or PCI certification? The standards are part of the overall merchant requirements to maintain the security of cardholder data. Those rules change over time and a bunch of Verifone equipment is expiring, including the popular Vx520 countertop terminal and Vx820 pinpad.

Last August, Verifone issued end of life notification on their PCI 3 range of payment devices in compliance with the PCI Security Standards Council PCI 3 expiration date of April 30, 2020. Often merchants will get notifications like this from their acquirer on their merchant statement.

Which Verifone terminals are impacted?

  • Vx520, VX510, VX570
  • Vx805 – M280-703-0X-XXX-X
  • Vx820 pin pad
  • Vx675, Vx680, Vx685, Optimum M5
  • Mx915 (PN 132-XX…), Mx925 (PN 132-XX…)
  • H5000
  • This list does not include all devices! Merchants should check with their providers especially if using a non-EMV device or if you were an early EMV chip adopter.
  • verifone vx510

What does End of Life mean?

  • Final date for new terminal sales (fall 2019)
  • End of Development- Improvements or changes have stopped
  • End of Support Date- Verifone will not issue software updates after April 2020, except that, until April 2023 they will continue to provide error corrections for Severity 1 (Critical) software errors, including security vulnerabilities.
  • End of Service Date- April 2023. Verifone will honor any extended support contracts to their term. Subject to component availability and other factors, Verifone will also continue to provide repair.

(PCI) PIN Transaction Security (PTS) v4 expires April 30, 2023. PCI PTS v5 expires April 30, 2026.

Are merchants PCI Compliant if they continue to use PCI 3 terminals after April 2020? The PCI Council urges but does not mandate merchants use approved PTS devices in their payment environments. However, in our experience, between payment brand and acquirer requirements, merchants generally need to use only approved PTS devices or risk getting shut down. Research expiration dates of terminals on the PCI Council web site. I’d be concerned about liability and the ability to prove PCI compliance, especially in the event of a data breach. Verifone will not issue software updates or provide development support after April 2020. If security vulnerabilities or exploits are identified by the processors after April 2020, and you’re using the terminals, who’s to say when or even if a solution could be found to fix it?

How disruptive would it be for your business to have to shut down using them and get another solution? There are always people who procrastinate making changes. And when something goes wrong, phone calls to processors explode, so change is usually not as swift as you’d like.

Note, only employees and PCI QIR certified individuals can install or touch your credit card terminals. Terminals are one of the most important factors determining rates you pay and chargeback risk. Why? Call now to learn more. This is the perfect time for an external account review by a payments expert.

TIP for Christine Speedy Verifone Mx915 customers: If you have a part number that starts with this “PN 132”, replace the terminal. If you were an early adopter and had your terminals deployed prior to the EMV chip liability shift in October 2015, there’s no need to check part numbers; They need to be replaced. Please contact me directly to consult on replacement options.

Call Christine Speedy , PCI QIR certified, for new PCI 5 terminals, technology review and or merchant account review to maximize profits and improve your customer experience. 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET

D365 Customer facing invoice portal D365 F&O

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Looking for D635 F&O solution for clients to access online portal to view and pay invoices? One of the key solution differentiators is the integrated payment gateway for credit card processing. Easily overlooked, it’s most impactful on profits. Other than merchant discount, the payment gateway is the single largest influence on the cost of credit card acceptance and chargeback risk.

How can a payment gateway impact costs?

  1. Authorization management. There’s a slew of rules, which are continually changing, regarding what has to happen in order to qualify transactions for the lowest cost possible. Virtually no payment gateways support all of them. For example, authorize.net doesn’t support unscheduled credential on file (stored card on file). Reference https://community.developer.authorize.net/t5/Integration-and-Testing/Visa-Stored-Credentials/td-p/60149. The average cost differential for a Mastercard business card is 1% for a transaction with valid authorization vs invalid (but approved).
  2. Customer disputes and chargebacks. A merchant can only defend disputes if they have proper authorization in #1. Instead of wasting time defending disputes, merchants can prevent them with 3-DSecure 2.0, a global cardholder authentication solution. If the payment gateway supports it, “it wasn’t me, I didn’t authorize it” goes away; liability belongs to the issuer.
  3. Rate Qualification. Items 1 and 2 above both reduce the cost of card acceptance. So does supporting level 3 data. It amazes me how many calls I get from consultants and merchant services salesmen that just want to help their customers qualify business and purchasing cards for level 2 rates. Why wouldn’t you want all clients to qualify for level 3 rates, which are substantially lower for business to business transactions?
  4. Stored credential compliance. This is not just securely tokenizing cardholder data, but complying with a new set of rules established in 2017, which all merchants and acquirers are required to comply with. Payment gateways have no such requirement. They can choose to provide the services to clients or not. The trickiest is unscheduled credential on file, which is what most business to business companies need, unless they have a SaaS billing model. Towards the end of 2019, a few more gateways were offering this, but the list is very small.

Few payment gateways support all four items above.

Call Christine Speedy for D365 F&O invoice portal with compliant payment gateway to maximize profits and improve your customer experience. 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET for all your recurring billing and stored credential payment gateway and virtual terminal needs.

Chargeback Reason Code 4837 – prevent and win

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What is Mastercard chargeback reason code 4837, no cardholder authorization, and how can you win it? Don’t waste time defending chargebacks, make your company more profitable by preventing them. Combine card acceptance rules compliance with the latest technology to shift fraud liability is the number one method to prevent chargebacks.

What is Mastercard chargeback reason code 4837, no cardholder authorization?

The cardholder did not authorize the transaction.

What are some reasons why this happens when there is an existing relationship with the customer?

  • The card issuer can initiate a chargeback for invalid authorization; for example, a card present authorization was not settled within 24 hours
  • The merchant has a stored card on file, but did not follow proper protocols for storing and using stored cards.

Key Examples To Shifting Fraud Liability

  • Card present, support EMV chip and pin debit
  • Ecommerce, use cardholder authentication with 3D Secure which shifts liability for this type of situation back to the issuer.
  • Phone orders- comply with card not present authorization rules, including settlement time frames

While the steps above may seem simple, most developers, consultants and merchants are unaware of the nuances for authorization compliance. The assumption is that the payment gateway supports all merchant needs, but that is not the case. As rules complexities continue to increase, many payment gateways, regardless of size, have failed to keep up. This creates new risk for merchants who are unaware, and nobody is informing them otherwise.

Want a 3DSecure v2.2.0 compliant payment gateway for your business? Call Christine Speedy, 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET.