Visa has announced the Electronic Data Quality Program (EDQP) from October 2024 with enforcement beginning in April 2025.

The Visa EDQP will standardise and electronically evaluate a consistent set of data present in all clearing messages. Information sourced from the authorisation must be carried exactly into clearing for dual message processing.

This is designed to improve data integrity and maintain processing integrity throughout the lifecycle of a dual message transaction.
 

What you need to do: 

No technical changes are required at this time; however customers should be aware of the program and look out for future announcements in relation to this program.

EU Interchange Fee Regulation mandates customer choice at point of sale when using a card that supports more than one payment brand (i.e. co-branded cards).

Your business must:

• Display on the acceptance device (or for online payments, on the pages before final checkout) the available choice of card brands and enable the cardholder to make their own choice of card brand.

• Not override the cardholder’s choice of card brand. 

• Apply this to all transaction types: POS at terminal (POS) and ecommerce

For your business this also means that while you may steer customers towards a particular card brand, the cardholder must be offered a clear choice of which card brand is going to be used for the transaction. Cardholders must be able to make the final decision to select the card brand of choice.

What you need to do: 

You are reminded that you must display acceptance, and can set priorities on payment acceptance channels, while still making sure the consumer is able to make the final choice. If you are using an Elavon POS terminal or ecommerce gateway you have no action to take as we look after this for you. If you are using a third-party POS terminal or gateway, you should contact your provider to make sure there is correct support for co-branded cards.

Certain Visa BIN ranges can be used for cross-border transactions only. Currently, Visa will reject these at authorisation and, as part of the October scheme release, will extend this to cover clearing transactions as well. 

What you need to do: 

Customers should be aware that they may be notified of clearing rejects for any transactions processed as domestic using these cross-border only BINs.

Visa is reminding clients that the rule allowing the reuse of a Cardholder Authentication Verification Value (CAVV) up to five times when obtained by a booking agent or merchant servicer to facilitate delayed shipment and travel booking use cases in Europe ends on 18 October 2024.

3RI transactions can be used by merchants, acquirers and issuers for the use cases that were previously permitted under this rule, including:

• Delayed shipment
• Other payments / multi-party commerce

What you need to do: 

If you are reusing the CAVV value to facilitate the items above, you should ensure that you do not do this after 18 October 2024.

Mastercard uses Merchant Advice Codes (MAC) in authorisation request responses to tell merchants about a cardholder’s account. MAC clarifies the reasons why a transaction was declined and offers advice on how merchants can retry a declined authorisation request in an informed manner to reduce the chance of further declines.

Merchants should therefore familiarise themselves with these MACs. The benefits of using Merchant Advice Codes for Elavon customers include:

• Clear reasons for declined authorisations 

• Allows fast resolution of any issues to prevent customer loss and optimises your customer’s experience

• Prevents loss of revenue

• Reduces false declines

Below is a table showing the Issuer Response Code, the MAC that could be received back as part of the authorisation request and the action that should be taken:

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) terminal 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 understand if you need to take any action.

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 is 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

Mastercard introduced the default Trace ID in 2020 to comply with PSD2 requirements for recurring payments that were started before PSD2 became effective. This default Trace ID is therefore no longer needed and a growing number of issuers decline authorisations with default Trace IDs. 
 

Mastercard has announced the end of support for the default trace ID (MCC9999991231), sometimes also known as the dummy trace ID, from 18 October 2024. Businesses that currently use the default trace ID must change to a trace ID of a recently approved authorisation as soon as possible. The default Trace ID used for indirect travel bookings (MCC9999981231__) may continue to be used. 
 

The trace ID from the authorisation approval can then be used for future authorisations, provided that:

• The related recurring payment arrangement is at least three months old, for example the initial authorisation was sent at least three months ago and

• There has been no cardholder dispute or fraud reports for this recurring arrangement. 

   

What you need to do: 

If you are using a third-party integrated POS solution or gateway provider, you should contact your service provider to make sure they can support a valid trace ID as soon as possible or have plans to support this immediately.

Mastercard is providing the ability for merchants to submit service location geographic co-ordinates directly instead of converting the data into other formats, such as a postal address. This gives merchants a choice to send service location in latitude/longitude format where the service location differs from the DBA location.

Service Location is a new concept introduced in the October scheme release and only applies to specific merchant scenarios where the service location differs from the acceptor location.
 

What you need to do: 

If you use an Elavon device or gateway we have updated our systems to cater for this, if you would like to use it. If you use a third party then you should reach out to your provider to see if they can support this change.