Card Brands - Visa Reminder: Processing Best Practices for Authorization Reversals and Account verification

For: All merchants
Date effective: Reminder

Processing Best Practices

All approved and partially approved Visa authorization transactions must be either cleared or reversed (e.g., reversed in the case of a cardholder-canceled sale or an authorization request submitted by the merchant in error). Merchants must:

•	Process authorization reversals for authorizations submitted in error and/or cardholder-canceled transactions
•	Use a zero-amount account verification request to validate the consumer payment information prior to authorization, rather than using status checks or low value authorizations

A matched reversal is a transaction in which the key tracing elements match a previous authorization. This includes, but is not limited to, the following authorization fields: Card Number (Field 2), Authorization Response Identification (Field 38), Retrieval Reference Number (Field 37), and Transaction Identifier (Field 62.2).

Correct response codes for account verification requests

Merchants use a zero-amount verification request to validate card information prior to establishing a deferred payment relationship or performing authorization. The verification message allows the merchant to validate the consumer payment information without requesting authorization, thereby mitigating a “hold on funds” issue that could be present with a traditional authorization. 

Merchants should be aware of the following requirements for verification requests:

•	An issuer must respond to a verification request with Response Code 00—Approval, Response Code 85—No Reason to Decline, or an appropriate decline response code.
•	Response Codes 00 and 85 indicate to the acquirer that the issuer has validated the following:
	• The account number has been issued • The account is in good standing • All requested elements of the transaction (e.g., the address) are valid
•	A decline response indicates the account number, or any of the elements requested, are not valid or the account is not in good standing. Note: When an account verification is processed in stand-in processing (STIP), Visa will validate the account number has not been listed on the exception file and will validate elements of the transaction in accordance with issuer STIP processing options.