An Account Check allows a card/account to be validated by checking the customer’s account, address and security code values are valid and that it is acceptable to proceed with the transaction.
No funds are reserved or transferred by the account check process, but you may specify an amount. This amount is inherited in future transactions that refer to the account check as a parent transaction.
Requirements
This functionality is only available to those with the following user roles:
Site admin, Site user, Site user 2, Transaction admin, Transaction admin 2
This feature is only available with select acquirers and the checks performed may differ based on the payment type. To find out if your acquirer supports account checks and to activate it on your account, please contact our Support Team.
How to perform an Account Check
1. Select transaction(s) for Account Check
- Method 1: Type in the full transaction reference into the universal search at the top of any MyST page and submit to view transaction details.
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Method 2: Select “Transactions” from the left and then “Transaction search“. Perform a search and:
- Either: Tick the checkboxes down the left of the table for the transactions you would like to action. In this manner, you can action multiple requests at once.
- Or: Click a transaction reference displayed in the results table to view further details.
2. Select the action
Click the “Account check” button displayed near the bottom of the page.
If there is not enough space to display all options, these will be combined into a single “Actions” button. Click to expand, like so:
Note: If you cannot see the “Account check” button on the Transaction search page, this may be because your acquiring bank does not support this functionality. Please contact our Support Team for further information.
3. Allowed and Disallowed transactions
If successful, the page displayed will be pre-filled with details inherited from the selected transaction(s).
You should check the “Summary” table at the top of the page, which displays the number of selected transactions that are “Allowed” and “Disallowed”. Disallowed transactions are not suitable for the desired action and are not displayed on the page.
This can occur for a number of reasons, including:
- Some Alternative Payment Methods (APM) do not support Account Checks. Please refer to our documentation for Payment Pages or our API for further information about a given APM.
- You may have selected a request type that does not support re-authorisation, e.g. THREEDQUERY.
- Your acquiring bank may not support Account Checks. Please contact our Support Team for further information.
4. Fill out the form
Check the values displayed on-screen and make any necessary adjustments.
Note: The customer will not be debited by the Account Check. An amount can be included and this is stored on our system, which can later be inherited by future transactions.
You click the “+” icon on the left to expand the form and display additional fields that can be changed prior to the Account Check being processed. Of particular importance, you may wish to check the following:
- Check the expiry date is still valid on the customer’s card. If the customer has renewed their card and has a new expiry date, you can enter the new value on the form to proceed.
- We do not store the security code associated with the customer’s card on our severs. You can prompt the customer for their security code and enter this on the form. This allows security code checks to be performed.
When you are ready to process the request, click “Account Check” at the bottom of the page.
You can also configure your own system to process Account Checks by interacting directly with our API. Click here to learn more.
Handling the response
If the action was processed successfully, you should see a green success message at the top of the page. For each row under the “Successfully Processed Transactions” header, you can click the “+” icon to view the full response for each action processed.
A summary table will also be displayed at the top of the page, counting Success and Error cases.
Troubleshooting errors
If errors have occurred, the transactions you attempted to action should remain on screen. Check the error code and message for further information on the nature of the problem. In some cases (e.g. a field error), you can correct a mistake on the form and resubmit. Invalid fields are highlighted in red. Ensure you click the “+” icon on the left as the field that is causing the error may be hidden.
