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Online & Authorization
These are codes that communicate the issuer's conditions for approving a transaction online (IAC-Online), for declining it (IAC-Denial), or for declining it when the terminal cannot go online (IAC-Default).
Chargeback
A chargeback is a dispute raised against a card transaction when the cardholder did not make it or does not recall it. The dispute types vary depending on the situation; let's look at them.
Payment Systems
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Visa and Mastercard suspended services for sanctioned Russian banks. This post explains the impact on cardholders and merchants, and Russia's MIR and UnionPay alternatives.
Payment Systems
Cards are delivered to customers by courier, and at several points along that chain a card could theoretically be intercepted. To prevent misuse before delivery, banks print new and Lost/Stolen replacement cards as Temporarily Blocked, activating them only once the customer receives them.
Credit Card
You may have noticed that the same transaction amount earns different reward points when paid with a credit card. Have you ever wondered why? The points a card earns are managed within the card bank's authorization system.
Merchant & POS
Loyalty points are promotional rewards banks give customers for credit card transactions, tracked on a card/customer basis. Banks charge merchants a commission on POS transactions, and some share part of that commission with cardholders as points.
Chargeback
A chargeback is the process of requesting that an amount paid by credit card be refunded, either because the goods or services paid for were not received, or because a transaction is identified as one the cardholder did not carry out.
ISO 8583
We covered the ISO 8583 basics in an earlier article. This post explains the ISO 8583 message structure in detail: every ISO 8583 message consists of three main parts - the MTI (Message Type Indicator), the Bitmap, and the Data Elements.
Credit Card
Track3 is a field that doesn't need to be written to the card's magnetic stripe. It's used only in very specific cases and isn't required for authorization transactions. Issuers generally don't encode Track3 data onto the card's magnetic stripe. It consists of 104 numeric characters.
HSM & Security
PA-DSS (Payment Application Data Security Standard) is the Payment Application Data Security Standard set by the PCI SSC, a global security standard created by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.
Agentic Commerce
Points or habit? Loyalty programs are built on steering human behavior. But if an AI agent starts shopping on our behalf, do points and campaigns still work the same way?
Payment Systems
TCR stands for Transaction Record Component, the packets that carry transaction information in a clearing system. Transaction types in a clearing file are distinguished by transaction code and usage code values, and this data is sent inside TCR packets.