PayPoint.net VYC MERCHANT GUIDE Copyright PayPoint.net 2008 This document contains the proprietary information of PayPoint.net and may not be reproduced in any form or disclosed to any third party without the expressed written permission of a duly authorised representative of PayPoint.net Limited. Registered in England No: 3539217. VAT Reg. No: 680 1343 55
PayPoint.net VYC (VERIFY YOUR CUSTOMER) Merchant Guide 1 st July 2008 Table of Contents 1 Overview... 3 2 VYC... 3 3 VYC Checks... 3 4 Integration... 3 5 Getting Started... 4 6 VYC Terminal... 4 7 Transaction Detail... 5 8 VYC Reporting... 6 9 Retrospective Checks... 7 10 Support & Disclaimer... 8 Appendix A: Address Representation... 8 Table of Figures Figure 1: Verify Your Customer Terminal screenshot... 4 Figure 2: Transaction Detail screenshot... 5 Figure 3: VYC Panel screenshot... 6 Figure 4: AVS/VYC Report screenshot... 6 Figure 5: Retrospective Check option screenshot... 7 Figure 6: Pre-Populated VYC Terminal for Retrospective Check screenshot... 7 Figure 7: Formatting Irregular Addresses... 8 Page 2 of 8
1 Overview Merchants accepting card payments in the online and card not present environment face an ever-increasing threat of fraud from identity theft. Many Merchants face challenging legal compliance issues. PayPoint.net offer a range of highly effective tools and services to reduce risk, ensure legal compliance and enhance profitable customer relationships. PayPoint.net VYC (Verify Your Customer) is a powerful service that enables you to perform a range of age and identity checks on any UK consumer as part of either an authorisation request to the PayPoint.net Merchant Card Payment Engine (MCPE) or as a standalone check. It can even be used to retrospectively check cardholder detains from previous transactions. For verification performed during card authorisation, these checks occur in real time and typically add less than a second to the payment process. The service is designed to automatically validate name, address and date of birth. A mortality database is also checked to help combat the growing problem of identity theft of the deceased. 2 VYC The VYC product is designed to provide quick and easy access to our core customer verification services. This is made possible by aggregating a key set of UK-based look-ups and indicators into one simple check mechanism. It is hoped that VYC will provide an accessible and natural progression for Merchants currently using our Address Verification Service (AVS) but requiring a relatively inexpensive way to ensure far greater confidence in their checks. VYC is also ideally suited to Merchants processing UK customer payments via an acquiring Merchant Account but wanting a quick and easy way to validate their customers identity and address using a variety of premium sources. 3 VYC Checks PayPoint.net VYC performs several core checks against the following data sources: UK Electoral Roll (confirming name and address) UK Directory Enquiries DB (confirming name and address) UK Consumer Credit Industry DB (confirming name, address and date of birth) UK Mortality Check (negative check confirming whether identity is deceased) All checks are performed using high-quality premium data sources. The UK Electoral Roll check is able to query at least six years of local records, whilst the UK Directory Enquiries check can even validate the identity of ex-directory users. What is a check? ck? What can I expect from these checks? Checks performed by VYC are not predominantly concerned with obtaining data, but data validation. For many of the checks, this is an absolute requirement of the UK Data Protection Act. Many of the checks will simply confirm that the identity provided (a name and address) exists and is valid within a key data source. However, for successful matches we are able to provide you with additional information. The databases consulted by VYC are among the most well established and commonly used in the UK. 4 Integration The VYC service is available via API for Merchants who are integrated with our Freedom +Bank MCPE service. Consult the Freedom +Bank MCPE VYC integration supplement for guidance on how to add VYC checks to your payment requests. MCPE VYC Integration Supplement (available from Merchant Extranet: Resources > Integration Guides) For customers using our Hosted +Bank service, no integration is required. VYC is available on the Merchant Extranet; via the VYC Terminal for manual checks, or via the VYC Retrospective Check function for existing transactions. The remainder of this document serves as a user guide for use of the VYC solution via the Merchant Extranet. Page 3 of 8
5 Getting Started To perform a new manual VYC check or to verify a customer from an existing transaction on your account, you must login to your Merchant Extranet account at: https://secure.metacharge.com/extranet/ You will need access to the Sales tab in order to submit new VYC checks or retrieve existing transactions against which to perform verifications. If you do not have access to this tab, please consult the principal account holder. The VYC Terminal is available via the menu option of the same name. For Merchants with payment processing accounts the Verification will take place alongside a simple pre-authorisation of the card at no cost to the cardholder. For Merchants holding Address Verification-only (AVS) accounts, the Verification will take place alongside an AVS check of the cardholder. In each case the Terminal will respond in real-time with the outcome to the checks performed. 6 VYC Terminal The VYC Terminal, available via Sales > VYC Terminal is similar to the PayPoint.net Virtual Terminal or AVS Terminal but collects additional information required in order to correctly verify a UK customer. The additional fields include: First Name Last Name Gender (M or F) Date of Birth (optional) Name/Number in First Line of Address* (i.e. 10A in 10A Old Street) Street in First Line of Address* (i.e. Old Street in 10A Old Street) Additional Information in First Line of Address* (i.e. Kings Court in Flat 10, Kings Court, Old Street) *Please see Appendix A for guidance on how to express irregular or complex street or street number addresses. For convenience the VYC Terminal will pre-populate corresponding fields required for payment processing such as the Card Holder s name, in order to make it quick and simple to fill out all the necessary details to perform a check. Figure 1: Verify Your Customer Terminal screenshot Date of Birth Gender (M or F) First Name(s) Last Name First Line (Additional) First Line (Street Name) First Line (Name or Number) Verification options include a basic AVS check as standard for those Merchants with AVS services. In such cases VYC will be optional. In all other cases VYC is the only check available and will be performed as standard. Clicking the Verify button will initiate the verification in all cases. Page 4 of 8
7 Transaction Detail Any transaction performed with an accompanying VYC check will result in an additional information panel on the corresponding transaction detail screen. This will appear to the right, above the PayPoint.net FraudGuard panel. Figure 2: Transaction Detail screenshot Transaction options menu Verify Your Customer result detail panel Like the FraudGuard panel, the VYC information panel is laid out in easy to follow sections, each of which is headed with a PASS, WARN, or FAIL summary. These outcomes are valuable indications of whether custom is legitimate and hence valuable, or where an identity is not substantiated by VYC and hence caution is required. The five individual checks will also return their outcome via API for those Merchants integrating the service with our Bank Enterprise MCPE solution. For transactions without VYC, the transaction options menu, highlighted above, can be used to perform a retrospective verification of a cardholder (see section 9). Page 5 of 8
The VYC panel provides a summary of each check, its outcome, and any supporting information. Figure 3: VYC Panel screenshot Electoral Roll Check Verifies that a name and address is present on the UK Electoral Roll, and for how many consecutive years. Returns the full entry for all matches. Directory Enquiries Verification using BT Directory Enquiries, returns the phone number where not ex-directory. Consumer Credit Data Verifies that a name and address exists in the UK s leading database of credit applications and finance services, provided by Experian. Anyone with a bank or card should be identifiable. The level of match is reported and ranges from full name and address, surname and address, address only, to no match. Mortality Check Verifies whether a name and address is an identity recorded as deceased on the death register. Date Of Birth Validates a submitted Date of Birth against the Consumer Credit Database (SHARE). Date of Birth only displayed where matched. Other Checks VYC obtains information from a series of additional checks. These are primarily designed to further validate a given identity (name and address) as being present in alternative data sources, but can also identify inclusion in any significant data, i.e. company directorships or known terrorists. Due to the supplementary nature of these checks, they are not available via API. 8 VYC Reporting Any VYC transaction can be accessed and viewed using traditional reporting means, including transaction search (Sales > Search) or listed alongside all other transactions in an Account Statement view (Sales > Statements). However, a dedicated VYC report provides a simple colour coded summary of only those transactions in which checks were performed, along with their results. It can be found via Sales > VYC Report. Figure 4: AVS/VYC Report screenshot Hover help identifies the check type referred to by each column heading and the report can be re-configured according to a desired date range or other specific criteria. Each transaction can be accessed directly simply by click-through. Page 6 of 8
9 Retrospective Checks One popular feature of VYC is the ability to perform a retrospective check on an existing customer. This is made possible by automatically re-submitting the details from an existing transaction, direct from our systems, to initiate a new check. This simple facility is designed for Merchants who wish to verify and review the cardholder from an existing transaction in order to have greater confidence in their identity before deciding whether to fulfil their purchase or accept further custom. Such a mechanism is ideal when combined with pre-authorisation of payments in order to verify the identity of high risk customers and where appropriate reject their payment before having to accept any money and therefore liability. To perform VYC on an existing cardholder, simply locate their transaction and select Verify This Customer with VYC from the dropdown of transaction options. If the option is not available please contact our dedicated Merchant Support team. Figure 5: Retrospective Check option screenshot Using this option will pre-populate the VYC Terminal (see section 6) with all the requisite details to perform a check (see figure 7). The customer card details will not be used for the Retrospective VYC check, so no card details need be entered. All other details are carried over from the existing transaction, with the opportunity to make adjustments and corrections to the name and first line of the address, while also able to set the cardholder gender and date of birth accurately. Figure 6: Pre-Populated VYC Terminal for Retrospective Check screenshot The VYC retrospective check transaction will be performed in reference to the previous transaction and will always be displayed as a related transaction to its predecessor. This allows for easy cross-reference between details of the payment and the retrospective customer verification, when using the Merchant Extranet to review transaction history. Page 7 of 8
10 Support & Disclaimer If you have any questions or you require further information or support, please contact the Merchant Helpdesk at completesupport@paypoint.net or call during office hours GMT on +44 (0)870 190 4126. Please do not contact us for any non-technical queries regarding the results provided by any VYC check. These checks are performed against confidential data and unfortunately we are unable to comment on the actual records held. This is a requirement of the Data Protection Act. All checks performed merely validate information which is provided in a VYC Request against a range of sources. We do not have access to, nor can discuss, specific customer data. Appendix A: Address Representation To maximize successful checks, addresses must be supplied in a recognisable format. For irregular cases, the following guide should be used in order to submit component parts of the address in the correct fashion. Figure 7: Formatting Irregular Addresses 10A New Street New Town TN1 3QX Flat 4, Kings Court, New Street New Town TN1 3QX The Shrubbery, New Street New Town TN1 3QX Number/Name Street 10A New Street Number/Name Flat 4 Additional Kings Court Street New Street Number/Name Street The Shrubbery New Street City / Town Postcode / ZIP New Town TN1 3QX Page 8 of 8