Introduction to SCA Exemptions – Trust Payments

There are certain scenarios where you, as a merchant, may deem the risk of fraud for a given transaction to be sufficiently low that you would prefer to attempt to avoid an EMV 3D Secure challenge to reduce friction during checkout.

Trust Payments-acquired merchants can apply exemptions to transactions to significantly reduce the likelihood of a challenge ("Step Up") authentication flow being triggered by the card issuer — provided these are permitted by your acquiring bank.

By applying an exemption to a transaction, you assume liability for chargebacks incurred in exchange for a more streamlined checkout experience for the customer.

Any transaction that your system flags as exempt from authentication is reviewed by the relevant card issuer prior to authorisation to check their pre-determined criteria for exemption have been met. They reserve the right to reject your request, in which case the transaction will still be subject to 3D Secure authentication. There are different types of exemptions that can be applied. It is your responsibility to assign the correct exemption and ensure the transaction meets the necessary criteria for said exemption.

If a transaction is successfully exempted from 3D Secure authentication, it will forgo the liability shift, meaning that if fraud occurs on the exempted transactions, you will be financially liable for the subsequent chargeback. The exact terms will depend on the relevant card issuer.

Card issuers may enforce additional requirements for certain exemptions to be applied. They reserve the right to reject the request for an exemption. If this occurs, a soft decline may be returned in the Authorisation response, requiring further action to complete the transaction.

Learn about soft declines

Trust Payments supports the following types of SCA exemption:

Transaction Risk Analysis (TRA)

TRA is a frequently-applied exemption that is designed to allow merchants who are processing low-risk transactions to process transactions without the need for additional verification methods.

Card issuers may decide to return a soft decline response and require a step up to an EMV 3D Secure challenge.

The max amount that can be exempt with TRA depends on your fraud rate:

Fraud rate	Max exempt amount
Below 0.13%	€100 / £100 (or local currency equivalent)
Below 0.06%	€250 / £250 (or local currency equivalent)
Below 0.01%	€500 / £500 (or local currency equivalent)

Low Value Exemptions (LVE)

You must not process an LVE transaction for greater than €30 / £30 (or local currency equivalent).

Card issuers may return a soft decline response and require a step up to an EMV 3D Secure challenge in the following scenarios:

If you process a cumulative total of €100 / £100 (or local currency equivalent) since last SCA.
If you process 5 consecutive LVE transactions since last SCA.
When the issuer decides they require an EMV 3D Secure challenge.

If you would like to start applying SCA Exemptions to your solution, please contact our Integration Team to discuss your requirements and we can provide the appropriate documentation.