Soft Descriptor

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 can you set it

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.

Allowed Characters

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

We will also explicitly restrict the use of these characters.

Forbidden Character	Character Description
`,`	Comma
`"`	Double Quotes
`~`	Tilde
`^`	Caret
`\|`	Pipe
`.`	Period
`@`	at
`#`	hash

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 City 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 (Neo Banks): Merchant Name/Brand Name_Account Owner Name Account-toAccount (Cash deposit): Merchant Name _Account Owner Name
Card Acceptor Name for Account Funding	Money Transfer Format (includes P2P, A2A, Funds Transfers, Wallet Transfers, Business Initiated: The Card Acceptor Name field must contain the "Doing Business As" name or abbreviation of the merchant (1-4 characters) and be the name most recognizable to the cardholder in addition to the recipient's name. The Merchant Name field must contain the full Merchant Name or conform to this format when 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)

Field

Guidelines

Card Acceptor City 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 (Neo
Banks): Merchant Name/Brand
Name_Account Owner
Name
Account-toAccount (Cash
deposit): Merchant Name
_Account Owner Name

Card Acceptor Name for Account Funding

Money Transfer Format (includes P2P, A2A, Funds Transfers, Wallet Transfers, Business Initiated: The Card Acceptor Name field must contain the "Doing Business As" name or abbreviation of the merchant (1-4 characters) and be the name most recognizable to the cardholder in addition to the recipient's name.
The Merchant Name field must contain the full Merchant Name or conform to this format when 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

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Please note that these items may change
This documentation is a reference, reflecting what is currently known. These guidelines may change in the future.

Field	Guidelines
Card Acceptor Name	Alphanumeric - Please do not use special characters. Blank spaces and periods are allowed for use.

Discover Guidelines

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Please note that these items may change
This documentation is a reference, reflecting what is currently known. These guidelines may change in the future.

Field	Guidelines
Card Acceptor Name	Alphanumeric - Please do not use special characters. Blank spaces and periods are allowed for use.