Credentials on File (API)

A stored credential is information (including, but not limited to, an account number or payment token) that is stored in order to process future transactions.

The process of storing credentials for future use is known as Credentials on File (CoF).

Visa and Mastercard have mandated that you must obtain cardholder consent before storing card details for future use, and that these must be flagged at the time of the first authorisation, by submitting the credentialsonfile field in your requests.

You must also flag any subsequent payments that are utilising previously-stored credentials, by including the credentialsonfile field in these requests.

Examples of situations where the CoF mandate applies:

• Processing an account check or authorisation request, where card details are to be re-used later.
• Processing a re-authorisation.
• Processing regular recurring payments.

This mandate came into effect on 30th April 2018.

Requests processed before the cut-off are not affected, but new requests after the cut-off must include the credentialsonfile field.

While this is only mandated by Visa and Mastercard, you can still submit these values in all your requests, and we will ignore them for other payment types.

Benefits

Identifying transactions as using CoF provides the following advantages:

• Increases the likelihood of transaction authorisation and settlement.
• Greater transparency and improved experience from the customer’s perspective.
• Issuers are less likely to use the absence of a security code as a reason to decline a transaction.

Initial payment request including CoF

Update the payload submitted within your JWT (for AUTH and ACCOUNTCHECK request types) to include the additional field, credentialsonfile, with value set to “1”:

"credentialsonfile": "1"

If the credentialsonfile field has been submitted in the request and it is supported by the acquirer processing the transaction, it is returned in the response JWT.

If the parent response indicates an error occurred (errorcode is not “0”), the credential cannot be considered a stored credential, and you must not use these card details in any subsequent payments.

Customer Initiated Transactions using previously-stored credentials

Transactions processed by the customer are called Customer Initiated Transactions (CIT).

Update the request submitted using our Webservices API to include the additional field, credentialsonfile, with value set to “2”:

"credentialsonfile": "2"

If the credentialsonfile field has been submitted in the request and it is supported by the acquirer processing the transaction, it is returned in the response JWT.

Processing Merchant Initiated Transactions

Transactions processed by the merchant are called Merchant Initiated Transactions (MIT).

Visa mandate that you must provide a reason for processing MIT.

This does not apply to Customer Initiated Transactions (CIT).

This is achieved by submitting a new field in the AUTH request (submitted using our Webservices API) called initiationreason, containing a single character that maps to a reason as to why the payment is being processed.

These are the values we currently support:

• “A” – Re-authorisation
• “C” – Unscheduled payment
• “D” – Delayed Charges
• “S” – Resubmission
• “X” – No-show (for a hotel booking)

Click here for further information on the different initiationreason values.

You must ensure the initiationreason submitted in the request correctly represents the reason for the new payment. Visa may introduce new values to this list in the future. Please refer to Visa’s own documentation for further information.

While this is only mandated by Visa, you can still submit these values in all your requests, and we will ignore them for other payment types.

Processing MIT using previously-stored credentials

In the AUTH request submitted using our Webservices API, include the field initiationreason, setting the value to be one of those listed above.

"initiationreason": "S"

The MIT initiation reasons described within this document do not apply to scheduled / regular payments (e.g. subscriptions).

 

The MIT initiation reasons do not apply to transactions regarded as Customer Initiated Transactions (CIT).

Examples of using CoF and MIT in requests

Please refer to the table below for example use-cases of the CoF and MIT fields to be included when processing transactions: