Strong Customer Authentication Readiness
Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), a rule in effect as of September 14, 2019, as part of PSD2 regulation in Europe, requires changes to how your European customers authenticate online payments. Card payments require a different user experience, namely 3D Secure, in order to meet SCA requirements. Transactions that don’t follow the new authentication guidelines may be declined by your customers’ banks.
Strong Customer Authentication calls for online payments created by EEA merchants (including UK) against EEA issued cards to be strongly authenticated.
Failing to be SCA Ready would result in declined charges from the moment SCA is enforced by national regulators.
SCA could impact your business if all the following conditions have been met:
- Your business is based in the European Economic Area (EEA) or you create payments on behalf of connected accounts based in the EEA
- You serve customers in the EEA
- You accept card payments (credit or debit)
Payment Intents
Working with our Payments provider Stripe, we've migrated to SCA-ready Payment Intents.
In order to stay ahead of the regulation, as the third-party your business relies on to create charges, we needed to integrate with the Payment Intents API.
Payment Intents API abstracts the complexities of charge creation and SCA exemptions and introduces dynamic control of 3DS to help ensure that you're providing the customer with a streamlined, compliant checkout experience.
Minimum charge amounts
As Stripe’s processing fee combines a small fixed amount and a percentage, we enforce a minimum amount when creating a charge. This ensures we don’t lose money on a charge. The minimum amount you can charge depends on which bank account settlement currency the payment would be paid out to.
Amount must be at least £0.30 GBP
The charges must meet the minimum amount required for GBP (£0.30) after conversion.
That's why your customers can check out with a total of over £0.30, anything lower than that will result in an error.
