3DS Getting Started

3D Secure Guide

3D Secure reduces the risk of the unauthorized use of a cardholder account, and makes online shopping better and safer for both buyers and sellers on the web.

The service enables card issuers to verify a cardholder's identity and provide results to the merchant in real-time during the checkout process. This reduces the merchant's exposure to fraud and disputes, and protects the cardholder from fraudulent use of their credit card.

COPYandPAY

For users of COPYandPAY, minimal additional effort is required compared to the current integration. The widget will handle the entire additional communication and will be responsible for collecting required browser based information automatically.

Server to Server

For users who are integrating via server to server will need to follow EMVCo's guidelines on the frontend integration. When you are using the Server-to-server solution, you need to make sure to handle the 3D Secure response correctly, as it might be different to how the response is handled in case of a payment transaction without 3D Secure. Please refer to "Step 2" on our Server-to-Server 3D Secure tutorial.

Features

Depending on your business, you can take advantage of a number of features 3D Secure authentication offers.

Exemptions can be used to reduce friction during cardholder authentication. The Open Payment Platform offers a simple way to handle these use-cases.

  • As a passthrough each merchant can determine which exemption to use.
  • As an addition to transaction processing the Open Payment Platform determines if an exemption is applicable and applies it to the payment transaction.
  • As a standalone service the Open Payment Platform determines if an exemption is applicable and returns the suggested exemption flag.

Non-payment authentication (NPA in short) offers the option to authenticate the shopper even when there is no payment transaction happening and in cases when the transaction amount is not known.

  • During card tokenization if there is no payment amount present, NPA will apply.
  • During a payment transaction NPA can be used if the amount is not known of it is zero

Mastercard has defined a custom authentication message category called Identity Check Insights, formerly called Data Only. It provides the merchant with the flexibility to share cardholder data through the EMV® 3DS rails to influence an issuer’s decision to approve a transaction without requesting authentication and thus with no risk of cardholder challenge and added latency.


3RI authentication stands for 3DS Requestor Initiated Authentication. This is an authentication method where the cardholder is not present and the transaction is initiated by the merchant. This type of authentication is mainly used to get the status of an already authenticated transaction in case of delayed shipments.

To request a 3RI authentication as a merchant, send the following 2 fields with the request:

threeDSecure.channel=01
customParameters[PriorReference] = ACS Transaction ID of the cardholder initiated authenticated transaction. This value is present in the response of the authenticated transaction, in the acsTransactionId field.


Decoupled Authentication is an authentication method whereby authentication can occur independent from the cardholder’s experience with the 3DS Requestor (merchant). During decoupled authentication the shopper will not do the authentication during the challenge flow in the iframe on the merchant's website, but separately via a mobile application for example.

To request a decoupled authentication from the issuer, send the threeDSecure.decoupled=true field with the request.
Please be aware that not all issuers support decoupled authentication. In case it's not supported, the transaction will be authenticated with the normal workflow.


Try it out

Important: Our test system is using an in-house 3D Secure simulator. To make sure you successfully test the various features and scenarios, please follow our 3D Secure testing guide.
For the full list of mandatory and optional parameters for 3D Secure, please take a look at our 3D Secure parameter reference table.