Real Time Account Updater (Real-Time AU) enables real-time updates on payment card credentials for Merchant-Initiated Transactions (MIT), ensuring you have the most current customer card information to reduce declines and enhance the cardholder experience.

With Real Time Account Updater, the pre-authorization step required by the Account Updater batch process is not needed. This eliminates the gap in time between merchants requesting account updates and submitting authorization requests.

If customers don’t provide timely updates to their account information, transactions may be declined. Declined transactions not only affect revenue but also increase costs for merchants who must contact customers for updated payment information. Additionally, customer satisfaction may decrease, negatively impacting your brand experience.

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Interested?

Please reach out to your TabaPay representative or email us at [email protected] to get enabled for real-time account updater.

This service is only available to TabaPay Clients who are enabled for TabaPay Tokens i.e. store cards with TabaPay.

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Mitigating Excessive Retries

TabaPay Clients who choose to enable Real Time Account Updater must be aware of Visa Excessive Retry Fees as well as MasterCard Transaction Processing Excellence programs. Without proper controls against updated credentials, excessive retry fees may increase.

The efficacy of tools like Real-Time Account Updater are heavily dependent on the client consuming the response back from the card network when the card, and only attempting a re-try on the card when they are allowed to.

If a payment credential is in bad standing because of it being invalid/closed/expired etc, re-attempting an authorization with TabaPay will result in undesired Excessive Retry Fees.

Category 1 - Issuer Will Never Re-approve Attempts TabaPay clients must not reattempt a transaction declined with a Category 1 decline response code; any reattempt to authorize will be assessed a fee.

• 14 (Invalid account number)
• 46 (Closed account)

Category 3 - Data Quality where re-attempt is permitted up to 15 times in 30 days.

• 54 (Expired card)

What to do for Network Response Code 14/46/54:

TabaPay will return Payment Account Reference in Create Transaction API Response, and this reference will help the client avoid re-trying on the same card.

Use Cases

• Subscription Payments: Keep customer payment information up-to-date to reduce the risk of declined transactions due to expired or changed card details.
• Recurring Billing: Maintain accurate billing cycles for regular payments by updating customers' payment credentials to avoid missed payments.
• Installments: Verify that each scheduled payment is processed with the most recent card information, decreasing the likelihood of declined transactions.

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Supported Card Brands

The Real-Time Account Updater service is only available on Visa Cards.

How does Real-Time AU work

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Pre-Requisites

TabaPay Clients:

• Must be both enabled at TabaPay and subsequently be registered with the card network for the Real-Time Account Updater service.
• Should know that the RTAU only co-exists when there is no CVV2 or CAVV or TAVV in the transaction. RTAU is intended for Merchant-Initiated Transactions.
• Are required to have an existing, commercial agreement with the cardholder to receive RT AU updates.

TabaPay Real Time Visa Account Updater enables you to securely process transactions using TabaPay's Unified API using the most up-to-date card credential. You can access issuer-provided updates when card credentials change, therefore reducing the need to rely on customers to provide updates themselves. TabaPay responds and provides account number or expiration date updates, closed account advices, and contact cardholder advices in real-time using TabaPay's Unified API response

This drives incremental value by increasing speed-to-update payment information.

1. TabaPay Client requests processing of a payment card using TabaPay Create Transaction API.
2. TabaPay processes the transaction with the network and places an authorization request, and requests real-time account updates along with it.
3. Card network responds to the authorization request and includes real-time account updates.
4. TabaPay responds to the client's in TabaPay Create Transaction API response along with any updates on real-time account updater service. The only information stored and shared through real-time account updater updates are PAN updates, Expiry Date, updates account closures, and cardholder service information.
   The following are update types:
   1. New Account Number Updates
   2. New Expiration Date Updates
   3. Closed Account Advices
   4. Contact Cardholder Advices

No CVV2. No CAVV.

The real-time service is only available on transactions that do not include CVV2 or a dynamic cryptogram such as 3D-Secure Cardholder Authentication Verification Value (CAVV) or a token authentication verification value (TAVV). This could be interpreted as the service being only available for Consumer Initiated Transactions.

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Real-Time AU for Merchant Initiated Transactions (MIT)

Since Real-Time Account Updater only works when there is no CVV2 or CAVV or TAVV, TabaPay Clients must know that when these values are present, the transaction will still work as usual but with the existing payment credential. In other words, real-time account updater will not kick in when these values are present.

Real Time Account Updater Response

Possible Real Time Account Updates

Error Codes

Billable Events

Only the following codes result in a billable event.