Tag Archives: stored credential

D365 Finance & Operations Questions To Ask Before Choosing Credit Card Processing Solution

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Upgrading to D365 from Microsoft AX? Engaging a payment processing professional can save boatloads of development time while opening up new ways to engage with customers. Additionally, payment gateway selection directly impacts EBITDA project objectives. What three key questions must be asked when choosing a credit card processing solution for your business to business operation?

I’ll save merchants and consultants reading this a lot of time. Ask the 3 questions and then pretty much disregard the answers. You’re unlikely to find anyone who will be able to answer all three questions adequately so on that basis alone, it’s best to contact a subject matter expert like Christine Speedy, here at 3Dmerchant.com.

  1. Does the payment gateway support Unschedule Credential On File? Virtually every business to business operation stores at least a few credit cards for the occasional customer on file need, which is a good thing because if you’re one of those that require customers to call in each time, that’s negative friction impacting cash flow, profits, and satisfaction. What most businesses don’t know is that the rules and technical specifications for storing cards and processing transactions with stored cards changed tremendously in October 2017. Virtually no payment gateway has upgraded to get compliant, leaving businesses exposed to multiple financial penalty risks. Note, this is not just ‘tokenization’, which most gateways support, but rather a specific set of new card acceptance rules. Everyone in the payment ecosystem has some responsibility to make changes for compliance- issuer, acquirer, merchant and payment gateway. No one can ‘automatically’ get merchants compliant with new UCOF rules; if any vendor says they have, call 3Dmerchant to review why it’s not.
  2. If the initial authorization and final settlement amount are not the same, what happens? This is a common scenario for distributors, manufacturing and ecommerce, but if there’s a mismatch, an or an open authorization is not reversed, merchants pay an expensive processing penalty fees. For example, MasterCard Data Rate 1 might appear on merchant statements for interchange rate qualification, which is nearly 100 basis points higher than if settled optimally.
  3. Is there any difference between the type transaction transmitted to the acquirer when a customer self-pays an invoice such as through a payment portal vs when an employee key enters the cardholder data? The answer must be yes. One is submitted as a phone order (MOTO) and one is submitted as an ecommerce order.
  4. BONUS: What’s the process for renewing an expired authorization? Preauthorizations are common in manufacturing and ecommerce. While an expired authorization is usually approved for final settlement within 30 days, there are financial penalties and risk associated with using expired authorizations. Merchants should automate this process as much as possible, removing decisions from employees, which is always fraught with risk.
  5. BONUS 2: Can I process EMV chip transactions with level 3 processing in F&O? Due to October 2019 licensing changes, some merchants may find it more profitable to skip the retail license add-on.

Call Christine Speedy, PCI Council QIR certified, for all your Microsoft Dynamics AX and D365 payment processing needs from ACH to credit cards and more. Get a new or keep existing merchant account at 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET.

What is Recurring CoF Monitoring?

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Recurring CoF monitoring is related to merchants using stored cards on file for recurring billing. Merchants are getting notices from acquirers about failing MasterCard Data Integrity reporting and, from what I’ve seen, only have two weeks to correct the issues.

The below merchant has been identified by the latest MasterCard Data Integrity reporting as failing Edit 21 – Recurring CoF Monitoring. Per MasterCard, all recurring payments are considered credential-on-file transactions.  MasterCard requires POS entry mode= 10 (credential-on-file) to be sent for transactions identified as recurring.  Please work with the POS vendor and these locations to correct the POS entry mode. If corrections are not completed, merchants are subject to non-compliance assessments and fines will be allocated.

Basically, a merchant must comply with rules about how a transaction is presented to the acquirer and the issuer for authorization. The payment gateway is largely in control of sending the correct data with each transaction. In the example violation notice, the merchant is not compliant with recurring payment rules which requires specific steps when storing a card for the first time and then for ongoing payments.

The 3Dmerchant.com blog has many articles about the Visa Stored Credential Mandate. Visa’s are the most stringent and by following them, merchants will also be compliant with MasterCard’s. The rules went into effect in October 2017, with enforcement delayed to May 2018. Despite some claims to the contrary on payment gateway web sites, the mere fact that a payment gateway can support the correct data set does not make a merchant compliant automatically. Merchants should read the rules on this web site, which includes links to the card brand rules.

Card brand rules (Visa, MasterCard etc) are constantly changing and many payment gateways have not kept pace with been given a notice, then don’t call your existing provider. The rules were announced in 2016 and went into effect for most businesses (some were earlier) in October 2017. If your vendor let this happen to you, it’s time to get advice from another source. Here’s a list of payment gateways compatibility status.

Call Christine Speedy, CenPOS Global Sales. 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET for all your stored credential payment gateway and virtual terminal needs. CenPOS is an integrated commerce technology platform driving innovative, omnichannel solutions tailored to meet a merchant’s market needs. Providing a single point of integration, the CenPOS platform combines payment, commerce and value-added functionality enabling merchants to transform their commerce experience, eliminate the need to manage complex integrations, reduce the burden of accepting payments and create deeper customer relationships.

Recurly Visa Stored Credential Framework blog omission

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A Recurly blog article “How Recurly is Supporting Visa’s Stored Credential Framework” has some misinformation. The cited dates are incorrect and merchant responsibilities are understated. Why is that important? Most payment gateways and technology solution providers are not keeping up with the rapid pace of rules and compliance changes, impacting merchant profits and risk. Therefore, payment technology vendor selection, including payment gateway selection, is critical.

Recurly, like others in the cloud solutions space, is partially dependent on their partners to keep their clients in compliance with a myriad of rules. When should technology partners alert their integrated solutions partners about industry changes affecting their mutual clients? Solutions providers and merchants are getting inaccurate advice, or none at all, from trusted advisors, technology providers, and consultants of all sizes and sources.

“As soon as Visa released the news in their Merchant Business News Digest in August 2017, Recurly began reaching out to our gateway partners to get ahead of the work required to fulfill the mandates.” The real dates were much earlier than cited. Visa typically announces at least one year in advance of due dates for any significant change, which this update is. Updates were in the October 2016 Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules rules, citing changes coming in April and October 2017. On April 27, 2017 Visa published further information for merchants via the Stored Credential Framework document, which also references prior articles published on the subject dating back to 2016.

For most merchants, the mandate went into effect October 14, 2017, not April 2018, however, Visa did announce a delay in compliance action to April 2018.

From Recurly, “There is no action needed from our customers.” While technology solutions and payment gateways manage technical aspects for compliance, there’s much that’s left to merchants. Here’s an excerpt from the Stored Credential Framework document:

Merchants and their third-party agents, payment facilitators, or stored digital wallet operators that offer cardholders the opportunity to store their credentials on file must:
• Disclose to cardholders how those credentials will be used.
• Obtain cardholders’ consent to store the credentials.
• Notify cardholders when any changes are made to the terms of use.
• Inform the issuer via a transaction that payment credentials are now stored on file.
• Identify transactions with appropriate indicators when using stored credentials.

I strongly recommend reading Visa Core Rules Table 5-20: Requirements for Prepayments and Transactions Using Stored Credentials and Disclosure to Cardholder and Cardholder Consent. For example, how will you provide proof of cardholder consent (think time and date stamp) upon request? Are you providing the required receipt with proper format for zero dollars when storing a card without running a transaction?

Note: This article is not a review, endorsement or complaint about the quality of Recurly services which I have never used. It is simply identifying errors and omissions related to the stored credential mandate that may impact merchant profits, risk and decision making. I would have written in their blog comments, but it wasn’t available. When choosing a payment gateway, consider how agile they’ve been in meeting deadlines for changes, and how they’ll help reduce compliance burden, among other factors.

Christine Speedy, CenPOS Authorized Reseller, 954-942-0483 is a PCI Council QIR certified professional based out of South Florida, near Fort Lauderdale, and Rochester, NY, with extensive payment gateway experience. Christine can uniquely help merchants and technology providers navigate the complexities of PCI, acquirer, and card brand compliance rules.

Are You Compliant? B2B Credit Card Processing Fact Check

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Merchant compliance with various credit card processing rules maximizes profits while mitigating risk. This is especially true for business to business companies. But that task is getting harder and harder with the onslaught of new rules, and virtually impossible if not using a sophisticated cloud solution to help manage compliance.

b2b visa stored credentialIf your B2B company stores credit cards, there’s a pretty good chance you’re not compliant. For example, Visa’s 2017 Stored Credential Transaction framework (PDF download from Visa) outlines merchant responsibilities to obtain customer consent as well as storing credit cards, using stored credentials (token), and managing stored tokens. Failure to comply with Authorization rules, for example preauthorization and final settlement do not match, has far-reaching consequences including higher interchange rates (the bulk of credit card processing fees), penalty fees and new chargeback risks. With so many new rules across multiple card brands that vary based on business and transaction type how can a business quickly ascertain if they’re compliant?

Quick tips to validate compliance:

  1. Is cardholder authentication performed when a new card is stored? When the cardholder data is entered and submitted, the issuer responds with an approval or declined message. A small charge is not an acceptable practice to submit transaction for approval; instead a zero dollar authorization request for authentication is submitted. If authentication is via 3-D Secure -Verified by Visa, MasterCard Secure Code, whereby the customer self-authenticates vs merchant initiating, reduced rates may apply. Under the new rules, two transactions occur at the time a card is stored. Compliant answer is yes.
  2. Is a transaction receipt delivered to customer when you store a credit card? This will be either for an amount or a zero dollar authorization. When stored credit card credential (token) is created, a transaction receipt is generated with the approval or decline and other mandatory fields. Compliant answer is yes.
  3. Does the receipt include “RECURRING” or “REPEAT SALE” for token transactions? Compliant answer is yes.
  4. Review merchant statements, usually the last 1-2 pages with the heading “pending interchange” or “fees” section. Do you see EIRF, STANDARD (STD), or DATA RATE I? Compliant answer is no.
  5. Can you produce documentation of customer consent to store their card (including with 3rd party service) and how it will be used?

If you’re not in compliance, your payment gateway is the most likely culprit, followed by ERP or other software integration limitation. I can fix that.

Reference: Links for all Card brands.

Need help getting compliant?

Call Christine Speedy, , for simple solutions to complex payment transaction problems, 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET. CenPOS authorized reseller based out of South Florida and NY. CenPOS is an integrated commerce technology platform driving innovative, omnichannel solutions tailored to meet a merchant’s market needs. Providing a single point of integration, the CenPOS platform combines payment, commerce and value-added functionality enabling merchants to transform their commerce experience, eliminate the need to manage complex integrations, reduce the burden of accepting payments and create deeper customer relationships.

Delay in Compliance Action for Visa Stored Credential Framework

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From the Visa Merchant Business News Digest, October 17, 2017.

In the 1 September 2016 edition of the Visa Business News, Visa introduced new rules related to credential-on-file transactions, including merchant disclosure requirements and transaction identifier requirements went into effect for merchants and acquirers on 14 October 2017.

However, based on stakeholder feedback, and after assessing market readiness and taking into account the holiday season system freeze, Visa will extend the time to make the necessary system changes until 30 April 2018.

While the rule is still effective as of 14 October 2017, Visa will not take any compliance action or assess non-compliance assessments to non-compliant entities prior to 30 April 2018. Entities that comply with the rule by 30 April 2018 will not be required to submit a waiver request to Visa.

https://usa.visa.com/support/merchant/library/visa-merchant-business-news-digest.html

End Visa bulletin.

The stored credential framework applies to all merchants that store credit cards. Note, while some stakeholders were not ready as per the above statements, CenPOS was. CenPOS replaces other payment gateways, for example authorize.net, as well as solutions such as BillTrust, while enabling customers to keep their acquirers and other partners.

See more info here https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/support-legal/documents/stored-credential-transaction-framework-vbs-10-may-17.pdf

Christine Speedy, CenPOS authorized reseller, 954-942-0483. CenPOS is a merchant-centric, end-to-end payments engine that drives enterprise-class solutions for businesses, saving them time and money, while improving their customer engagement. CenPOS secure, cloud-based solution optimizes acceptance for all payment types across multiple channels without disrupting the merchant’s banking relationships.