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Soft Descriptor

Description that appears on the cardholder's statement.

What is Soft Descriptor

Soft Descriptor is a tag that will appear on the cardholder’s statement and helps the cardholder identify the transaction and helps avoid unnecessary calls by the cardholder to their issuer to help identify the transaction. You can find more information here under the Statement Descriptor section

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Ask TabaPay

Consult with your TabaPay representative for Card Acceptor Name values.

How to Set the Soft Descriptor

Soft Descriptor can be configured across all your transactions at the time of Onboarding (Static value)
Soft Descriptor can also be configured at transaction time in TabaPay's Unified API (Dynamic value)

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Transaction Overrides Require Permission

When clients require overrides of the soft descriptor at transaction time, it will require a permission from TabaPay's compliance teams.

Remember to be fully compliant when configuring card acceptor values.

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Data Integrity Issues

When soft descriptors are provided during transaction-time, TabaPay requires our clients to ensure that the value follows guidelines below.

Networks consider it non-compliant when the State and ZIP Code do not match. Please ensure that the State and ZIP Code values are valid and match.

Restricted Characters

Soft descriptors are very sensitive and presence of bad characters or absence of requirements will result in declines.

The use of these characters within the name fields are explicitly restricted.

Forbidden Character Character Description
, Comma
" Double Quotes
~ Tilde
! Exclamation Point
$ Dollar Sign
% Percentage
& Ampersand
* Asterisk
() Parenthesis
> Greater & less than
: Colon
; Semicolon
[] Brackets
{} Curley Brackets
? Question mark
/ Slash
Backslash
^ Caret
| Pipe
@ at
# hash

Allowed Characters

Details for allowed characters are in the following Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover guidelines.

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Guidelines are Subject to Change

This documentation is a reference, reflecting what is currently known. These guidelines may change in the future.

Visa Guidelines

Card Acceptor Name/Location, pos. 1-40 Length: 40 Format: 40 ANS

Card-present transactions will require the location of the merchant outlet as the location where the transaction took place.

Card-not-present transactions must contain the merchant’s customer service telephone number, the merchant’s universal resource locator (URL) or internet/e-mail address.

Field

Guidelines

Card Acceptor Name for Payouts

Earned Wage Access (Employer Based):
EWA Provider Name_Employer Name
Earned Wage Access (Direct to Consumer):
EWA Company Name
Insurance Payouts:
Insurance Company Name
Gambling Payouts:
Casino Name or Payout Facilitator_Casino Name
Marketplace Payouts:
Marketplace Name

  • *P2P:
  • *P2P Brandname_Sender Name
  • *P2P (FI Initiated):
  • *P2P Brandname_Sender Name
  • *P2P (Processing Platforms):
  • *P2P Brandname_Sender Name
  • *Account-to-Account (non-FI, excluding brokerages):
  • *A2A Service Provider_Account Owner Name
  • *Account-to-Account (NeoBanks):
  • *Merchant Name/Brand Name_Account Owner Name
  • *Account-to-Account (Cash deposit):
  • *Merchant Name_Account Owner Name

Card Acceptor Name for Account Funding

  • *Money Transfer Format (includes P2PA2A, Funds Transfers, Wallet Transfers, Business Initiated: **The Card Acceptor Name field must contain the "Doing Business As" name or abbreviation of th merchant (1-4 characters) and be the name most recognizable to the cardholder in addition to therecipient's name.
    The Merchant Name field must cotain the full Merchant Name or conform to this format whe including a recipient name:
    Format Field Position Data
    Pos. 1-4: Merchant Name (abbreviated)
    Pos. 5: Asterisk (*)
    Pos. 6-25: Recipient Name (optional, but recommended)

MasterCard Guidelines

Delimiter fields must be the blank character. This is required because most cardholder statement rendering systems in operation today are not designed to perform printer output editing or formatting of the acquirer-supplied data in soft descriptor.

American Express Guidelines

FieldGuidelines
Card Acceptor NameAlphanumeric - Please do not use special characters. Blank spaces and periods are allowed for use.

Discover Guidelines

FieldGuidelines
Card Acceptor NameAlphanumeric - Please do not use special characters. Blank spaces and periods are allowed for use.

Updated 12 days ago