Payment Gateway Integration SCA Updates

Our payment gateway partners recently announced that from September 14th, 2019, any card payment that is initiated by the cardholder online will be required to validate the transaction through a secondary verification process.

This means that, in addition to entering card details with CVV code, the cardholder must prove their identity in another way.  The most common methods for this are 3D secure (entering a password) or SMS verification (where a text message is sent to the phone, and a code from that message must be entered online). This update is referred to as SCA – Strong Customer Authentication.

In order to comply with this, payment gateways and processors must update their flows.  
 
In reviewing the proposed updates from many of our connected payment gateway partners, we can now confirm that SCA will ONLY affect card activity on the Public site of Elina. This means that booking engine and the guest/owner/agent lounge areas. There, if a user wishes to use their card to pay or book, they will be required to follow a 3D secure-like process. This means that in addition to putting in their card details with CVV code, they will also be redirected to enter the third level of card validation. This can be in the form of 3D secure or some sort of SMS or other validation.
 
For all cards processed from OTAs or channels and those entered by Elina users (staff), the current flow of card handling will not change.
 
elinaPMS will be upgraded to support this flow for all payment gateways ahead of the September 14th deadline.
 
Updates by the payment gateways could mean your current account is no longer able to take online payments.  We would strongly recommend all clients who use payment gateways to check their accounts type to make sure that it will support this new option when it is integrated in order to avoid disruption to payment processing.