Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
While Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. are shelling out big bucks for the loyalties of card issuers and merchants (Digital Transactions News, April 29), they’re also adding technological muscle to attract more transaction volume to their networks. In the latest example, MasterCard on Monday announced a host of upgrades to its worldwide processing network that include global enhancements as well as improvements in specific regions.
The global improvements include reduced authorization response times and added data capabilities in authorization messages, according to Dana Lorberg, group executive of technology and business integration at MasterCard’s operations center in suburban St. Louis. Lorberg wouldn’t quantify the increase on authorization speed, but faster times obviously benefit all parties to a transaction. “We’ve looked at all the nooks and crannies … to make sure everything is calibrated at its proper level to make sure we retain that speed,” she tells Digital Transactions News.
The enhanced messaging capabilities, meanwhile, are partly an outgrowth of the specialized needs created by newer payment channels such as online and mobile commerce and the demands of commercial, or corporate, card users for more non-payment data such as sales tax and invoice information. “This particular adjustment we’ve made is to expand the amount of information senders and receivers can exchange,” she says.
U.S.-specific network upgrades include reduced hold times on automated fuel dispenser transactions; enhanced rewards card-redemption features, and optional risk-monitoring services. Gas-pump holds sometimes draw the ire of consumer groups because of the times they lock the so-called “open-to-buy” on credit card lines or actual funds in checking accounts on debit card transactions so that the card issuer can be assured of payment. The CARD Act of 2009 sets a release time of no more than 48 hours, according to Lorberg, but MasterCard’s enhancement will enable releases in less than two hours. “Consumers have felt the pain on debit or prepaid-type of accounts, so I think this is helping our customers or consumers get those hold releases earlier,” she says.
The added capabilities for rewards redemptions involve MasterCard’s new “Pay With Rewards” system that lets merchants or groups of merchants offer points or related loyalty programs through MasterCard cards. With the new technology, merchants can offer their customers separate loyalty cards that facilitate instant point redemptions at the point of sale as payment for goods and services, with MasterCard’s back-office system tracking the points.
Finally, the risk-control enhancements include a new, optional real-time score for the issuer in the authorization message. Until now, MasterCard offered issuers a “near-real-time” risk score that trailed the authorization message by a short amount of time and was intended to give issuers an alert for possible follow-up if they assessed the transaction as risky, according to Lorberg. The real-time scores can be part of customized, broader risk-control systems issuers can design using the MasterCard network, Lorberg says.
System enhancements elsewhere in the world include ATM bill payments in Singapore, Argentina, and Uruguay; installment payments in those latter two countries; and new card-activation services on private-label prepaid cards in Europe.
