Handling Referrals

A transaction may be returned as a referral for a number of reasons e.g.

• Cardholder is approaching or has reached their credit limit
• Transaction is of a high value
• Transaction is not typical of the cardholder's regular spending pattern

Having received a referral from the merchant's acquirer, TransactDirect stores the transaction in a 'Pending Referrals' area, informs the merchant via a ResponseCode of 02 and a Message of CARD REFERRED but does not present the card for payment.

note

The merchant will need to request a Validity ID in order to complete referrals via the TransactDirect Payment API.

Implementation

From the perspective of the merchant's system, the following procedure for handling a referral via TransactDirect would normally be used.

1. The merchant's system receives a transaction returned as: ResponseCode = 02 and Message = CARD REFERRED.

2. Merchant's system should store the returned Cross Reference.

3. Merchant should telephone their acquiring bank using the telephone number provided for this purpose by the acquirer.

   • If the merchant's acquirer supports this facility, the telephone number to call will be returned in the response field ReferralTelephoneNumber.

4. As a result of the telephone call, the acquirer will either give the merchant an authorisation code over the telephone or inform the merchant that the transaction has been declined.

5. If the acquirer has informed the merchant that the transaction has been declined, the merchant's system need do nothing else.

6. If the acquirer has given the merchant an authorisation code, the merchant's system needs to submit a transaction request with the following fields:

   • All the mandatory generic transaction request fields
   • The MessageType field prefixed with PAYMENT_ONLY_
   • The CrossReference field, populated with the Cross Reference stored in step 2, in lieu of the card details
   • The AuthorisationCode request field