Visa has implemented a Food Court Program fee of 0.55% for eligible food court operators, and removed the Visa Bill Pay Fee Program.

Additionally, the following updates will go into effect on 24 February 2024:

•  The account funding transaction (AFT) interchange hierarchy will align with product purchase interchange rates
• Authenticated/non-authenticated e-commerce fee programs will be removed
•  MCC-based fee programs will be added for the supermarket, utilities, and government segments
• The existing government fee program indicator (FPI) will remain for government entities not classified under any government MCCs¹
• The revised fee programs below

Table – Visa Revised Fee Programs

_{1. MCC 9211 – Court Costs, Including Alimony and Child Support; MCC 9222 – Fines; MCC 9223 – Bail and Bond Payments; MCC 9311 – Tax Payments; MCC 9399 – Government Services (Not elsewhere classified); MCC 9402 – Postal Services – Government only}

Effective 14 October 2023, Visa will revise their interregional interchange structure to include new rates that differentiate between card-present and card-absent transactions. Visa will also add a new downgrade rate for authorizations that are not settled within three days¹ (seven days¹ for card-absent airline transactions), and a credit voucher interchange rate for consumer and commercial products.

Table 1 – Consumer Interregional Interchange Rates

Table 2 – Commercial Interregional Interchange Rates

Table 3 –Interregional Interchange Credit Voucher (Refund) Rates

_{1.        Sundays, central processing date, and purchase date are excluded from the calculation.}

Visa has revised their Credit Business domestic interchange rates as shown below.  This will apply to transactions acquired in Australia with a Visa Business Credit Card issued in Australia. 

Table – Revised Visa Credit Business Domestic Interchange Rates

_{1. Goods and Services Tax.}

On 1 October 2023, Visa will update their Account Verification (AV) Service fee structure as shown in the table below. These fees will be applicable for AVs performed through either ISO or API channels, including the following API channels:

•  Payment Account Validation
•  Digital Account Verification
•  Visa Payment Processing

Table – Visa Account Verification Service Fee

Effective 1 October 2023, Visa is introducing their new small and medium Business (SMB) program to support the continued growth and acceptance of SMBs on the Visa network. The interchange rates shown in the table below will apply to eligible domestic debit transactions at eligible merchants.

To qualify for this program, you must meet all of the following criteria:

•  Have a unique tax ID
• Have less than 10M AUD in domestic debit qualifying merchant sales volumes (MSV) for the 12 months prior to participation; or, if the merchant had less than 12 months consecutive MSV, then the annualized MSV is less than 10M AUD
• Must not be covered under a separate interchange agreement
• Must not be processed via a marketplace or a staged digital wallet

Table – Visa New Small and Medium Business Program Fees for Domestic Debit Transactions

_{1. Goods and Services Tax}

On 11 July 2023, Visa activated their Visa Account Updater (VAU) and Real Time VAU. These activations provide the benefits of active lifecycle management for PAN-based payments, in addition to token-based payments, at credential-on-file (COF) sellers. Active lifecycle management allows you to experience higher cart conversion and payment success rate. Your customers will also see fewer declines associated with fraud, closed accounts, and expired or lost/stolen cards.

Table – Visa Account Updater and Real Time Visa Account Updater Pricing

For more information about the VAU services, contact your J.P. Morgan representative.

Visa’s existing interim PAN Pass Back Program will only be available until end of March 2026. This Program is for transit operators that require PAN to be returned to them during a token transaction. After March 2026, you are expected to implement changes to receive Payment Account Reference (PAR) instead of PAN. Visa will stop sending the PAN in transaction responses beginning April 2026.

The program will only be available for transit operators under the following Merchant Category Code:

• MCC 4111 - Local and Suburban Commuter Passenger Transportation, Including Ferries
• MCC 4112 - Passenger Railways
• MCC 4131 - Bus Lines

The following Program Fees will be assessed starting from April 2024:

On 1 January 2024, Mastercard will introduce their new Authorization Optimizer Service fee of 0.03% (min 0.0003 USD, max 0.075 USD).

This fee will be charged when a card-not-present (CNP) transaction is declined and meets all of the following conditions:

• Decline reason code is one of the following:
  • 79 (Lifecycle)
  • 82 (Policy)
  • 83 (Security)
• MAC is one of the following:
  •  01 (Updated/additional information needed)
  • 03 (Do not try again)

On 8 January 2024, Mastercard will revise their rates for the Final Authorization and Preauthorization TPE fees. Mastercard will begin billing these fees on 14 January 2024.

Table – Mastercard Revised TPE Fees

The Final Authorization TPE fee will be applied for each approved authorization that is not cleared or fully reversed by an acquirer within seven calendar days from the authorization date.

The Preauthorization TPE fee will be applied for each approved authorization that is not cleared or fully reversed by an acquirer within 30 calendar days from the authorization date.

_{1. The fee does not apply to private label or non-Mastercard transaction.}

_{2. The fee does not apply to automated fuel dispenser (MCC 5542) transactions, transit aggregated or transit debt recovery transactions, private label or non-Mastercard transactions, and offline approved transactions.}

On 1 September 2023, Mastercard revised their domestic Single Network Debit Card point-of-sale (POS) interchange rates. Interchange rates for other Mastercard Single Network Debit programs that are not included in the table will remain the same.

Table – Mastercard Domestic Single Network Debit Interchange Rates

_{1. Goods and Services Tax.}

Update: On 1 September 2023, Mastercard revised additional domestic credit interchange rates. Please refer to the below table for the updated list.

Mastercard revised their domestic point-of-sale (POS) interchange rates for transactions acquired in Australia with a Mastercard credit card that was issued in Australia. Interchange rates for other Mastercard credit programs that are included in the table will remain the same.

Table – Revised Mastercard Domestic Credit Interchange Rates

_{1.     Goods and Services Tax.}

_{2.     New rates effective 1 September 2023.}

Mastercard has modified their Consumer Super Premium: Other Card Not Present interchange rates for Mastercard credit cards issued in Australia to 0.869% including Goods and Services Tax (GST) and 0.790% excluding GST.

Mastercard added new commercial credit product codes to the Mastercard Enterprise Solution Wholesale Travel Program, shown in the list below. This is a global program that allows payments between travel buyers and suppliers, such as travel agents, airlines, and hotels as seen below. These rates do not have MCC restrictions. 

Existing interchange rates in this program remain unchanged.

Table 1 – Mastercard New Commercial Credit Interchange Rates

The following product codes are part of the existing Enterprise Sollution Wholesale Travel Program.

Effective September 2024, EMV 3DS version 2.1.0 will no longer be supported by the Visa network.

On 1 April 2024, Visa’s Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) v3.2.1 will be retired and on 1 July 2024, only PCI DSS validation documents based on v4.0 will be accepted.

All new assessments must be based on v4.0 to ensure that the submitted validation documents are accepted. You are encouraged to transition to v4.0 as soon as possible to ensure the protection of cardholder data. Please visit the PCI Council website for more information. 

Visa is reminding merchant-initiated transaction (MIT) framework participants that interim transaction identifiers will no longer be supported starting 1 November 2023. Please make sure to provide a valid transaction ID when requesting for authorizations on merchant-initiated transactions, including recurring, unscheduled, and installment transactions, to avoid declines.

Starting 14 October 2023, PIN and consumer device cardholder verification method will no longer be needed for unattended Visa transactions regardless of amount or type, without any liability implications. This change applies to transactions in the following countries

Effective 14 October 2023, Visa will make the following changes to their dispute rules.

I. Pre-Arbitration Processing Requirements for Dispute Conditions where the Cardholder denies authorization of or participation in a transaction 

For delayed transactions, such as those billed after a cardholder’s departure in a hotel stay, trip, or car rental return, you may submit evidence that the transaction is connected to a previous stay, travel, or rental period (e.g., a parking violation that occurred during the car rental)

II. Dispute Rule change under “Not as Described or Defective Merchandise / Services”

Disputes that are filed due to the quality of food received at restaurants will be invalid.

This program supports mutually agreed-upon rates between buyers and suppliers using virtual accounts on interregional, intraregional and domestic virtual business-to-business (B2B)¹ purchase transactions to support non-travel purchases for goods and services, targeted to wholesale and invoice-based transactions.

Please reach out to your JP Morgan representative if you require more information on the Visa Commercial Choice Omni program.

_{1. Transaction or business conducted between one business and another, such as a wholesaler and retailer.}

Visa may classify cardholder-initiated tokenized transactions as Electronic Commerce Indicator (ECI) 05 if they meet the following criteria.

• The token authentication verification value (TAVV) is included in the authorization request and validated by the Visa Token Service (VTS), and
• The token types are either:

o   01 credential-on-file and the token requestor-token service provider (TR-TSP) is Apple Inc.

o   02 secure element and the token requestor (TR) is Apple Inc.

Some cardholders are choosing to personalize their cards by transplanting the EMV chips and transferring the magnetic stripe data from their original cards that were issued by Visa to non-Visa customized cards. Visa has shared the following information about customized cards.

• Customized cards may not be compliant with ISO standards for payment cards and may not fit into chip readers
• Transplanted EMV chips may not have contactless functionality
• Customized cards may not be recognizable because they don’t have the Visa brand mark
• Merchants are not required to accept a non-Visa custom card

Visa currently monitors the existing data fields in the table below when you submit fraud-related disputes for card-not-present transactions. Please complete these data fields when you submit evidence for a dispute. If you choose not to provide this data, you will lose the right to challenge future disputes filed against you.

Table – Required Data Fields

_{1. Internet Protocol Version 4}

_{2. Internet Protocol Version 6}

Visa no longer supports Visa Checkout. Clients were automatically transitioned to Visa Click to Pay as part of their commitment to align with EMVCo Secure Remote Commerce standards.

Effective November 1, 2023, Visa’s new sensory branding requirements, which includes the Visa brand animation, the Visa brand sound and the Visa brand haptic, should be used in all payment experiences.

More information can be found in the Visa Digital Brand Requirements, available on visa.com.

Please contact your e-commerce solution provider to integrate the new Visa Sensory Branding requirements into your payment experiences.

Effective 1 October 2023, Visa will implement the Visa Digital Goods Merchant Fraud Monitoring Program to reduce losses due to digital goods and small ticket fraud. The program introduces minimum standards for fraud performance and identifies merchant outlets with excessive fraud levels.

Merchants would be assessed non-compliance fee if the program threshold is met or exceeded.

Threshold Criteria:

Merchants are strongly advised to take steps to ensure adequate risk controls are maintained prior to the program going operational.

Merchant Category Codes: The program will cover the following merchant category codes (MCCs):

• 5735 – Record Stores
• 5815 – Digital Goods Media – Books, Movies, Digital artwork/images, Music
•  5816 – Digital Goods – Games
•  5817 – Digital Goods – Applications (excludes Games)
•  5818 – Digital Goods – Large Digital Goods Merchant

Due to controls imposed by the Argentine Central Bank, Visa will reject all transactions presented in ARS (Argentine Peso) by non-Argentine Acquirers with cards issued by non-Argentine Issuers effective 10 February 2023. 

Effective September 2024, EMV 3DS version 2.1.0 will no longer be supported by the Mastercard network.

On 7 November 2023, Mastercard is introducing the following merchant advice codes (MAC) in their authorization responses:

• 40 – for a consumer non-reloadable prepaid card
•  41 – for a consumer single-use virtual card number (VCN)

By using these MACs for card-not-present (e.g., e-commerce) transactions, you may benefit from:

•  The ability to optimize approval rate performance,
• Lower operational costs associated with submitting unnecessary authorization requests and,
•  Improved management and continuity of subscription services. If you accept non-reloadable prepaid and single-use VCN cards, these MACs give you the opportunity to inform your customers that are using these products that they should replace their payment source to ensure uninterrupted service for ongoing purchases.

Do not store Mastercard or Maestro account credentials for future transactions if the issuing bank has transmitted one of these MACs in their response message.

On 13 October 2023, Mastercard will decommission 3DS v1.0 and Secure Payment Application (SPA) version 1 Accountholder Authentication Value (AAV).

Please contact your J.P. Morgan representative for questions regarding EMV 3DS requirements.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued the following restrictions on storage of actual card data for guest checkout transactions:

• You and/or your payment aggregator can save card-on-file data for a maximum of 2 days after the transaction date, or until the settlement date, whichever is earlier. The data can only be used for transaction settlements and must be purged after.
•  The banks can’t store card-on-file data for guest checkout transactions beyond 180 days after the transaction date.
•  Only banks are permitted to store actual historical card details used for guest checkout transactions in offline storage mediums.

The RBI will consider appropriate penal action, including imposition of business restrictions, in case of any non-compliance.

As best practice, Mastercard recommends that you rotate the individual Security Standards Council (SSC) assessor you engage from within independent security organizations if you are required to employ a Payment Card Industry (PCI) SSC assessor for PCI compliance validation.

Mastercard recommends not to collect CVC 2 on the checkout page for domestic card-on-file card-not-present tokenized transactions. This will result in higher authorization rates, lower checkout abandonment, and better payment experience for customers.

Mastercard will expand their Mastercard Installments program to Malaysia and Australia by the end of 2023. This program is part of the Buy-Now-Pay-Later service for cardholder payment flexibility.

Please contact your JPMorgan representative if you would like to learn more about the program.