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Card Purchases

A card purchase happens when a cardholder pays for a service or good using their card.

Card purchases involve two transactions:

  • Authorisation – during this transaction, the system checks card details, funds, and spend controls and reserves the funds.
  • Settlement – during this transaction, the system confirms the purchase and deducts funds from the card to send them to the merchant.

Authorisation​

When a merchant requests funds from a card, either at a physical point of sale or online, the system creates an authorisation transaction. Authorisation transactions transmit information that is used to decide if the transaction is approved or declined.

Institutions involved in authorisations check if:

  • The card details are valid
  • There are sufficient funds on the card’s balance to cover for the purchase
  • The purchase meets the restrictions defined in spend controls

If the above details are successfully checked, the system approves the transaction. Otherwise, the system declines the transaction.

When the system approves the transaction, it blocks the equivalent of the authorisation amount on the card’s balance. This guarantees that funds will be available when the system receives a settlement transaction. Funds can remain blocked for up to 30 days.

Strong Customer Authentication​

To protect against fraud, when the cardholder makes an online purchase, they must do one more verification steps. The system displays a page to the cardholder where they must input a verification code to proceed with the purchase.

tip

Secure customer authentication during card purchases is also referred to as 3DSecure.

Weavr supports different types of 3D Secure authentication methods. Read our guide to learn more on how to configure your application and end-customer cards.

Authorisation Notifications​

You can receive notifications of all authorisations on your customers’ cards using the card authorisation webhook. Authorisation notifications are sent to you in near real-time and you can use them to inform your customers about purchases made using their cards.

Settlement​

The system creates a settlement transaction when the merchant who requested an authorisation sends a second request to confirm the purchase.

In this transaction, the purchase amount is deducted from the card’s balance.

Settlement Notifications​

You can receive notifications of all settlements on your customers’ cards using the card settlement webhook. You can use settlement notifications to inform your customers about confirmed purchases submitted on their cards.