DataCash: Continuous Authority and 3-D Secure, choose one
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Loading ...I’ve blogged before about our experience of using DataCash as a payment service provider especially with regard to the difficulties of getting 3-D Secure working correctly.
Since then, we’ve hit another difficulty. We want to implement continuous authority (CA), which in essence is like setting up a direct debit on a credit card. This is because some of our customers would like us to simply charge their credit card with the outstanding amount each month. We started implementing this and got quite a long way down the path before hitting a major obstacle.
To set up the authority you need to make an initial payment, but simply flag this as being special. This initial payment is exactly like an ordinary credit card payment, but you get back a reference you can use next time around instead of providing the customers card details. We have committed to using 3-D Secure for any cards that support it, so that automatically took place for the initial payment, which is made online. Unfortunately DataCash can’t support both CA and 3-D Secure. So all of this development work had to be shelved.
Luckily for DataCash (and unluckily for us), no-one else who does CA with 3-D Secure also supports the other services we use from DataCash (in particularly paperless direct debit). So we are still a customer. But it does seem amazing that this support is not there, especially as 3-D Secure is slowly but surely being mandated by the big card providers.
March 25th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I’m Dave MacRae, the Senior Technical Consultant at DataCash. After speaking to Chris today and clarifying things I thought it best to clarify to everyone else.
Nominet are not trying to do Continuous Authority transactions. These are a specific kind of transaction that can only be carried out on a Visa, MasterCard or AmEx branded card. Specifically, Continuous Authority cannot be used with UK Domestic Maestro cards. Instead, you are attempting to use our Pre-Registered Card facility. This enables new transactions to be performed on any credit or debit card which has previously been successfully authorised on your DataCash account within the last year.
Such a mechanism does (partially) work with 3-D Secure in that the initial transaction (a pseudo-setup transaction) can be carried out using 3-D Secure. Subsequent transactions can be carried out using the Pre-Registered Card facility but these will not be protected by 3-D Secure.
In a few weeks time, DataCash will be releasing a facility whereby you can gain 3-D Secure protection for the follow up transactions as well. You will be able to initiate a 3-D Secure transaction based around a Pre-Registered Card, i.e. a customer won’t have to enter their card details and you don’t have to store them but the 3-D Secure process will take place.
I realise that this will not completely solve your problem as you will not be able to run any payment batches in this environment. The card holder must be directly involved to get the 3-D Secure protection.
Regards
Dave
March 25th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Hi Chris
You might be interested to know that NETBANX (www.netbanx.com) offer the following:
Continuous authority txns - 3D
Paperless Direct Debit/ Credits
E-wallets
POLi
Local European Payment Methods
Pence per transaction rates!
Hopefully this is helpful to you!
Adrian