Card brand changes: March 2024

Mastercard – PSD2 optimisation programme for soft declines

Under PSD2, most ecommerce transactions need strong customer authentication (SCA) unless an exemption or exclusion (like merchant-initiated transactions (MITs)) is applied.

To meet these PSD2 SCA requirements, customers need to use EMV 3DS, an appropriate exemption, or any other SCA-compliant method to avoid issuer SCA soft declines.

An SCA soft decline is a declined authorisation where the issuer requests SCA to make it successful. If you receive a soft decline you should re-submit the authorisation after successfully authenticating your customer with 3DS.

Mastercard launched the PSD2 optimisation program to monitor transactions to check if EMV 3DS was used after a SCA soft decline. If a customer fails this check non-compliance penalties could apply.

What you need to do: 

You should contact your gateway support team to make sure that when transactions are soft declined, the transaction is retried with EMV 3DS. For more information relating to PSD2 please visit our website at https://www.elavon.co.uk/insights/news/psd2.html

NB: The above table shows a selection of possible combinations of response and merchant advice codes, however other combinations are possible.

What you need to do: 

If you are using an Elavon point-of-sale (POS) device or ecommerce gateway you have no action to take as we look after this for you.

If you are using a third-party POS or gateway provider, you should contact your provider to find out if you need to take any action.

Mastercard has announced a requirement for population of the Merchant Payment Gateway (MPG) ID field for card-not-present transactions, with the exception of mail order/telephone order (MOTO) transactions. It will apply for all transaction types including purchases and refunds.

Mastercard wishes to make sure important data is captured and provided to everyone in the payment ecosystem. Elavon has already provided the gateway IDs to the gateways.

The card scheme has also said it might introduce a performance monitoring program to ensure compliance with this change.

What you need to do: 

You should contact your gateway support team to make sure that they are ready for this change.

From April 2024, Elavon will enable online refund authorisations for Mastercard transactions. This means that any refund transaction received will be sent online for issuer approval.

What you need to do: 

Elavon is enabling this functionality so you don’t need to take any action. But you should be aware that you may receive declines for refund authorisations from issuers after this is introduced.

Mastercard is revising the thresholds for Excessive Authorisation attempts under the Transaction Processing Excellence (TPE) program in Europe. Mastercard introduced this program in 2019, to reduce excessive authorisation attempts. Fees apply where specific thresholds are being breeched.

Currently Mastercard imposes a maximum of 10 consecutive declined authorisations on the same card number and the same card acceptor ID within a 24-hour period.

From 1 August 2024, in addition to the above, there will be an additional threshold of a maximum of 35 declined authorisations on the same card number, with the same card acceptor ID and for the same amount within a 30-day period.

What you need to do: 

In order to avoid these fees, you should:

• Stop sending authorisation requests on the same card with the same card acceptor ID after receiving 10 declined responses within a 24-hour period
• Stop sending authorisation requests on the same card, with the same card acceptor ID and for the same amount after receiving 35 declined responses within a 30-day period

From June 2024, Mastercard is introducing a new transaction identifier called Transaction Link Identifier (TLID). The TLID will be generated by Mastercard and is designed to provide consistent linking of transaction life cycle events from the original transaction, during authorisation, and any other related transactions such as the final clearing transaction.

For the time being, Mastercard will consider the TLID as supplementary and will be available alongside current transaction identifiers such as the Banknet Reference Number. However, it is widely expected that Mastercard will announce changes in the future to require the use of the TLID.

What you need to do: 

Elavon systems have been updated to receive the new TLID from Mastercard, however customers and partners should be aware of the potential for future changes to current identifiers.

Mastercard is clarifying requirements for travel addendum data. The new requirements aim to offer better transparency for cardholders leading to potential fraud protection improvements as well as a reduction in the number of related chargebacks.

The new requirements relate to enhanced travel information data:

• General ticket information 
  • Ticket Number
  • Issuing Carrier
  • Issue Date
• Rail data 
  • Ticket Number
  • Travel Date
  • Start Station
  • Destination Station
• Trip leg data
  • Travel Date
  • Carrier Code, 
  • Service Class Code
  • City of Origin/Airport Code
  • City of Destination/Airport Code
  • Flight Number
• Vehicle rental data 
  • Rental Agreement Number
  • Renter Name, Rental Return City
  • Rental Return State/Province
  • Rental Return Country
  • Rental Return Location ID
  • Rental Return Date
  • Rental Checkout Date
  • Rental Rate
  • Days Rented
• Lodging summary 
  • Arrival Date
  • Departure Date
  • Folio Number
  • Room Rate
  • Total Room Nights

Mastercard has also announced a future data integrity program related to airline addendum data, with monitoring beginning in May 2024 and fee assessments beginning in June 2025. Monitoring requires Airline merchants to send this data:

• City of Origin/Airport Code
• City of Destination/Airport Code
• Flight Number

What you need to do: 

In order to avoid potential penalties in the future, if you currently send addendum data to us, please make sure you are sending the revised minimum data required.

If you process card-not-present (CNP) transactions, especially those where cardholder billing is not due immediately such as subscriptions, in the past the only way to verify a card for an AMEX transaction was by doing a £1 authorisation.

This allowed the card to be verified, but often placed an authorisation hold on a cardholder’s account leading to extra customer service questions.

AMEX is introducing Zero Value Account Verification, in line with some other card schemes.

This allows:

• A card to be validated by sending an Authorisation Request with an amount of zero
• The card issuer can then confirm a card’s status without displaying a pending transaction amount on the cardholder's account

What you need to do: 

If you are using an Elavon point-of-sale (POS) device or ecommerce gateway you have no action to take as we look after this for you.

If you are using a third-party POS or gateway provider, you should contact your provider to find out if you need to take any action.