Payment Enhancements
After you have implemented the basic initial transactions you need in your system, consider what kind of enhancements you want to add to your payments to both improve the payer experience and to minimize the risks for your own business.
You can enhance your payments with:
- Details about ordered goods or services to help meet payments compliance requirements
- Improvements for payer experience
- Additional data to improve interchange rates
- Easier authentication
Details about ordered goods or services
You can add various kinds of details about the goods or services the payer is ordering into the initial request. You can provide details about the order in general and about individual line items included in it. Use the order and order.item[n] objects in the request body for these details. For more information, see Order and Line Item Data.
If you provide airline-, cruising-, or healthcare-related services, you can define various additional details about the service being bought:
- For airline data, such as flights, passengers, tickets, and itineraries, use the
airlineobject in the request body. For more information, see Airline Data. - For cruising data, such as cruise, ship, passengers, and travel agent, use the
cruiseobject in the request body. For more information, see Cruise Data. - For healthcare data, such as approved vision, dental, and prescription purchases, use the
order.item[n]object in the request body. For more information, see Healthcare Data.
All these details can be stored in the gateway and retrieved with individual transactions or orders, or included in reports you can download from the gateway. They can be used to support and streamline business processes, such as reconciliation and reporting.
Improvements for payer experience
To improve the overall payer experience on your web site and with your business, you can enhance your payments with:
- Email notifications
For merchants who send only occasional payments, if you subscribe to email notifications on the Merchant Administration, the gateway can send a notification to the payer’s email address whenever their order is successfully received (a PAY or AUTHORIZE transaction is processed) or a refund is issued.
- Descriptions for account statements
You can help reduce chargebacks by ensuring that the payer can easily recognize the payment made to you on their account or bank statement by including a descriptor text in your request. The bank adds the descriptor to the payer’s statement for that transaction. Use the
order.statementDescriptorobject in the request body. For more information, see Statement Descriptor Data. - Storing the payment details to serve returning customers
By storing the payment details of your payer (with their approval), you can provide better service for returning customers, as they do not need to enter their payment details again on your web site. You can use various Tokenization services to store the payer’s payment details in the gateway. When the payer returns to your web site, you display the masked card number to allow the payer to determine whether they want to use the same card. And when you send the payment transaction, you only need to include the token, as the gateway already has the related card details available.
Additional data to improve interchange rates
Sometimes adding more data to your request can create cost savings, especially if you are accepting card payments. Providing more details in your request can make it easier for the card issuer to determine whether to accept the payment, and consequently result in better interchange rates for you.
If you accept business, corporate, or purchase cards, consider adding to your request:
- Enhanced transaction data, such as customer reference number, invoice number, and sales tax amount
- Order line item details
For more information on the exact data to provide and the fields to use, see Level 2 and Level 3 Data.
Easier authentication
Preventing fraud and ensuring that the payer can get authenticated easily provides benefits to both sides: you can be sure that you will receive the payment for your goods, and the payer can see you as a trustworthy merchant that minimizes checkout friction caused by authentication-related processes during a simple purchase.
If you are using 3D Secure (3DS) authentication for your card payments, aim to provide extra details in the request about the payer’s purchase history. This can increase the chances of the Access Control Server (ACS) authenticating the payer using the frictionless flow instead of requiring the challenge flow and additional actions from the payer. For more information on the relevant fields, see the What can I do to increase the chances of frictionless flow? FAQ in 3DS Authentication.