April 29, 2014

New Feature to Support UK Debit Card Restrictions

This year, UK merchants and websites faced new restrictions on payment types to prevent underage debit card holders from purchasing from adult websites. Some processors tried to deal with this by simply blocking all debit card transactions, which unfortunately also blocked adult-aged consumers from purchasing as well.

We at CCBill decided to take a different approach. Rather than blocking the transaction outright, we developed a new system to allow the merchant to specifically block debit card transactions, but at the same time, offering the consumer a chance to contact the merchant directly - allowing the merchant the option to validate the age and approve the transaction.

Called Web Validate, it is designed to provide merchants with a flexible method to help configure and tailor their offerings to consumers on a regional and local level - however, Web Validate can be applied to a variety of different scenarios.

The new Web Validate feature allows merchants to set up rule sets based on country, card type, and card sub-type, and then trigger manual validation for the associated transactions. What is terrific about this is that it lets merchants tailor their offerings based on consumer preferences, economic norms, or regulations for any given region.

And while the U.K. regulation illustrates how our new feature can be used, it is just one example of how this can be used. If merchants want to not offer a payment type that just isn’t used by local consumers, they can. If merchants want to limit the use of gift cards across the board, they can. It really does let merchants configure their business to consumers locally, while operating on a global basis.

Web Validate also can be applied to any other countries in the future that may adopt regulations similar to what the U.K. has in place.

To learn more about this latest CCBill feature, email clientsupport@ccbill.com, or call (800) 510-2859 - and one of our technicians can help with the settings and implementation of this new tool.