Tag Archives: visa

Lodging Authorization Rules Change 2017 – Chargeback Prevention Tips

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online booking credit card fraudIn October 2016, Visa quietly announced sweeping changes to rules for card not present transactions in the lodging industry. With online booking technology updates, hotels can increase profits by complying with the new rules, including for guaranteed reservations. Failure to comply may significantly increase financial risk.

A core concept is valid “authorization”, which impacts merchant rights and potentially credit card processing rate qualification. An invalid authorization equates to a no authorization. Card issuers will be within their rights to use reason code 72 and chargeback, or ACH, the funds from merchant bank account on the next settlement day, for failure to comply with the rules. This is a significant change, as in the past, hotels would respond to cardholder initiated disputes, a completely different scenario, and win a good portion of them.

What’s a valid authorization? It’s mostly described in Special Authorization Request Allowances and Requirements. Key elements:

  • Stored credential– rules for storing and what associated data is required on file and what is submitted with transaction- same transaction ID required for all after initial approval
  • Estimated Authorization– indicator as to whether the authorization is an estimate or is final is sent with transaction. Authorization is valid for 31 days. (Originally 14 days, but subsequent bulletin released to change it.)
  • Incremental authorization  – must use same transaction ID as estimate, and submit with incremental authorization indicator
  • Visa now groups transaction types into ‘customer initiated’ and ‘merchant initiated’. For card not present, a transaction is only considered customer initiated, if Verified by Visa is used. Verified by Visa (VbyV) is their brand name for the global 3-D Secure cardholder authentication protocol for card not present transactions.

Updated Checkout Flow For Online Booking:

  • Opt-in to no-show policy, terms and conditions
  • Authenticate cardholder
  • Authorize with the estimate indicator
  • Deliver email confirmation with the policy
  • Incremental auths with same Trans ID only.
  • Close transaction by day 31; partial reversal same transaction ID if applicable.
  • If ticket closed, open new estimated auth.

KEY DATES

  • Effective through 13 October 2017: In the US Region, for Car Rental Merchants, Cruise Lines, and Lodging Merchants, the Merchant must use the Incremental Authorization Request indicator and the same Transaction Identifier for all Authorization Requests.
  • Effective 14 October 2017 Transaction initiated with an Estimated Authorization
  • Verified by Visa cardholder authentication protects lodging merchants immediately from “it wasn’t me” card not present fraud.

Without hotel action to update online booking in advance of the October dates, financial exposure for prior months may be significant.

Christine Speedy, authorized CenPOS reseller provides universal payment processing solutions to maximize merchant profits and mitigate risk across multiple sales channels. To get a CenPOS account and your booking engine compatible plugin contact Christine at 954-942-0483. 

Visa Partial Authorization Service

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Visa merchant library update on December 13, 2016. Visa provides a Partial Authorization service that provides an alternative to declining a transaction when the card’s available balance is not sufficient to approve a transaction in full. This flyer provides information about the benefits realized, how to use the service, and answers to frequently asked questions.

PDF 326 KB Visa Partial Authorization Service – Improve the Customer Experience and Increase Sales

“Partial authorization improves the customer experience by preventing embarrassment from a decline at the point of sale and enabling a seamless checkout with split tender transaction using multiple payment methods.” Christine Speedy

To accept partial authorizations for your business, a few items are needed:

  • Technology that supports it. Payment gateways certify partial authorization for each acquirer. Not all gateways certify.  The receipt must also show each payment amount.
  • The merchant must enable it. For example, this could be a checkbox in the ERP or shopping cart software payments module, or it might be turned on at the gateway administration level. It’s possible a gateway is certified, but the related software using the gateway does not support it.

If partial authorization is not supported, and there’s a decline due to insufficient funds, there’s still an open authorization for the funds that were in the account. An authorization reversal should be completed to remove hold on any cardholder funds. If you don’t want screaming customers, this is a must! Intelligent technology can automate this process.

Compliance with credit card processing rules can be extremely complicated. Relying upon employee training is futile. To improve your customer experience and automate rules compliance, contact Christine today at 954-942-0483.

 

Visa revises Merchant Location rules effective October 15, 2016

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Visa rules for how merchants must identify their name, type of business, and location are changing to keep up with the growing number of ways merchants interact and conduct transactions with their customers. Visa cites these rules are necessary to help prevent unnecessary cardholder disputes and reduce additional risk to the Visa system. Conversely, failure to comply with the rules could increase merchant risk to lose customer disputes.

“If you are an eCommerce merchant, your website must contain the merchant location on either the checkout screen used to present the final transaction amount or within the sequence of web pages that the cardholder accesses during the checkout process. It must not be a link to a separate page.” Visa Bulletin VBS 02.AUG.16

What is the proper location? It must be the country of your principal place of
business, where your executive officers direct, control, and coordinate your activities — generally, your company’s headquarters. I’d venture that 99% of ecommerce site are not compliant with this rule today, including Amazon.

For complete details, download PDF Official Bulletin by Visa Providing the Proper Location
of Your Merchant Business

PayPal and Visa Enter Partnership to Extend Consumer Payment Choice

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Companies Collaborate to Accelerate the Adoption of Digital Payments

SAN JOSE, Calif. & SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jul. 21, 2016– PayPal(NASDAQ:PYPL) and Visa (NYSE:V) today announced a U.S. strategic partnership that will result in an improved and more seamless payment experience for Visa cardholders and will offer greater choice in how consumers pay with the PayPaland Venmo wallets.

The partnership puts PayPal and Visa on a new path, with the companies working more collaboratively to accelerate the adoption of safe, reliable and convenient digital payments for consumers and merchants. Further, the arrangement is designed to carry significant benefits for issuing financial institutions, acquirers, and merchants. For issuing institutions, these include a better customer experience, more spending volume on their credit and debit cards, lower operational costs, and improved security. Merchants will also benefit from the improved customer experience, efficiency, and security, which together will help drive increased sales.

Details of this agreement include:

  • Enhanced Consumer Choice and Improved Experience for Visa Cardholders: PayPal will make it easier for new and existing customers to choose to pay with their Visa cards and ensure a more seamless experience:
    • Visa cards will be presented as a clear and equal payment option during enrollment and subsequent payments, with an easy ability for consumers to set as their preferred payment method
    • Visa digital card images will be incorporated into payment flows
    • PayPal will not encourage Visa cardholders to link to a bank account via ACH
    • PayPal will also support and work with issuers to identify consumers who choose to migrate existing ACH payment flows to their Visa cards
  • PayPal will Join the Visa Digital Enablement Program (VDEP) to Expand Point of Sale Acceptance: PayPal will join VDEP, a commercial framework for Visa partners to access Visa’s token services and other digital capabilities in the United States. This will enhance transaction security and expand acceptance for PayPal’s digital wallet to all physical retail locations where Visa contactless transactions are enabled. Consistent with VDEP, issuers will be able to choose whether to participate and retailers can expect to pay fees that are consistent with other contactless transactions they accept today.
  • Instant Withdrawal of Money: Consumers will be able to instantly withdraw and move money from their PayPal and Venmo accounts to their bank account via their Visa debit cards leveraging Visa Direct – providing an experience that offers speed, security and convenience.
  • Enhanced Data Quality: PayPal will ensure that data provided to issuers and their cardholders for Visa-funded transactions will be consistent with the information that is received with traditional Visa card transactions. This will ensure a better consumer experience, reduce cardholder confusion, ensure proper application of rewards, and reduce costly and time-consuming disputes.
  • Economic Incentives: The agreement affords PayPal certain economic incentives, including Visa incentives for increased volume, and greater long-term Visa fee certainty.

“Giving consumers choice in how and where they pay is essential to our goal of being a customer champion and we welcome the opportunity to work with more partners like Visa who share our vision,” said Dan Schulman, president and chief executive officer, PayPal. “This agreement opens new avenues for PayPal to collaborate with Visa, financial institutions, and others in the payments ecosystem to deliver greater value, more choice, and new experiences for our joint customers wherever they transact – online, in-app or in-store.”

“We are excited to begin a new chapter with PayPal. Our agreement provides a framework for our companies to work together collaboratively,” said Charlie Scharf, chief executive officer, Visa. “PayPal has built industry leading capabilities which complement those of Visa and our clients, and working together, we will be able to deliver better solutions for consumers and merchants. At Visa, we are focused on growth by providing our issuer and acquirer clients – and their clients, merchants and consumers – with the best way to pay and be paid everywhere and this agreement supports this approach.”

About PayPal

At PayPal (Nasdaq: PYPL), we put people at the center of everything we do. Founded in 1998, we continue to be at the forefront of the digital payments revolution. PayPal gives people better ways to manage and move their money, offering them choice and flexibility in how they are able to send money, pay or get paid. We operate an open, secure and technology agnostic payments platform that businesses use to securely transact with their customers online, in stores and increasingly on mobile devices. In 2015, 28% of the 4.9 billion payments we processed were made on a mobile device. PayPal is a truly global payments platform that is available to people in more than 200 markets, allowing customers to get paid in more than 100 currencies, withdraw funds to their bank accounts in 56 currencies and hold balances in their PayPal accounts in 25 currencies. For more information on PayPal, visit https://www.paypal.com/about. For PYPL financial information, visit https://investor.paypal-corp.com.

About Visa Inc.

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments. We operate one of the world’s most advanced processing networks — VisaNet — that is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second, with fraud protection for consumers and assured payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa’s innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, pay ahead of time with prepaid or pay later with credit products. For more information, visit usa.visa.com/about-visa,visacorporate.tumblr.com and @VisaNews.