Payment tracking update: What is Mastercard TLID?

Mastercard is changing the way it wants you to track payments. You will need to include the new Transaction Link Identifier (TLID) by October 2026 – a new data field which will eventually replace the Trace ID. 

Whilst it’s another scheme mandate – there are benefits such as efficiency gains, better data consistency, and easier tracking. There will be a little integration work that is needed and it’s worth working on as soon as possible, so you are ready well ahead of deadlines. Additional fees for non-compliance will be applied from January 2027.

Note: Information is correct at the time of publishing. Keep up to date with our latest communications via our official email channels.

Why are these changes happening?

Previously, transactions had been tracked through Trace ID, a string generated by the acquirer. However, there was a chance that Trace IDs could be duplicated, which could potentially cause problems with accurate tracking. 

Now, Mastercard generates a unique Transaction Link Identifier (TLID), which  from October 2026, you must include in every economically-related transaction. The TLID is a way to link all related payments with a unique code. The aim is to simplify operational research processes by matching and linking all messages across the entire lifecycle of a transaction, and further, economically-related transactions.

Summary of important dates

October 2025: Mastercard mandates acquirers pass TLID for lifecycle transactions.

June 2026: Mastercard will generate TLIDs for economically-related transactions (MITs, buy now, pay later, etc.).

October 2026: Merchants must send TLID on economically-related transactions so Mastercard can link them to the original CIT.

January 2027: Mastercard to assess fees for non-compliance with data mandates.

How can you use Transaction Link Identifier?

The new Transaction Link Identifier mandates relate to both lifecycle transactions – messages related to an authorization, such as capture, clearing, authorization reversal, chargebacks, and so on – and economically-related transactions – which are usually a series of separate payments following an initial billing agreement. The TLID is part of every payment message, and it never changes. You must store it for every transaction. It remains consistent across all Mastercard acceptance brands (including Maestro).

The main purpose of the TLID is to make associated payments easier to track down. Therefore, this new transaction ID can be used to connect a customer’s initial authorization to subsequent merchant-initiated transactions (MITs) as well as all payment lifecycle messages related to initial authorization. 

Here are some of the other main ways to use it:

Fighting payment disputes

One use case would be to find the first payment for a subscription service in the event a customer raises a payment dispute on a later MIT, claiming they did not authorize any such charge. In this case, the TLID would make it quicker and easier to locate evidence to fight the payment dispute.

Enriching payment records

For ideal transaction lifecycle management, you need to be able to enrich both required and supporting data. TLID supports this by eliminating the need to find the PAN, timestamp, value, STAN and RRN to link related payment messages. This makes it easier to combine all transaction events into one record, creating a complete transaction timeline. 

Of course, this is helpful for reconciliation purposes; you could find you’re better able to match authorization and clearing records thanks to TLID. That time-saving and operational efficiency is likely to please your Finance leaders – as well as saving everyone the headache of missing financial actions.

Investigating and payment problems

When your transactions are recorded in different locations, it can be tough to build a clear picture of related payments. This slows you down when you need to answer customer queries about duplicate charges, reversals, partial refunds, and more. The TLID is intended to make it simpler to link economically-related transactions, speeding up operations and helping your business respond to customer payment problems faster. 

That’s another way payment optimization has a beneficial impact on your wider business: happier customers mean stronger loyalty, leading to repeat purchases, better brand reputation, and a more profitable enterprise.

Linking authentication to subsequent payments

In a similar way to locating the first authorized payment in a series of customer charges, you can also use TLID to locate the initial authentication message, too. This ensures the following economically-related payments are considered authenticated, without needing to ask the customer to re-submit authentication data each time. This is particularly helpful in regions that mandate Strong Customer Authentication for ecommerce transactions, including the EEA and Japan. 

Authentication may have a positive impact on your issuer approval rates on recurring payments as we generally see a reduction in false declines on subsequent payments after the initial payment was submitted with Strong Authentication data.

Learn more: Boost acceptance rates using 3DS, adaptive messaging, network tokens, and more

What you need to do

Now is the time to prepare for storing the TLID from Mastercard. Your acquirer needs these when you are moving providers or using multiple PSPs, so you should store it for portability.

TLID implementation on your side is somewhat straightforward, and should take around a week or less. You should review your internal database to see if you can store an additional 36-character string against your customer payment profiles. TLID is not PCI sensitive, so does not need to be stored in a vault. 

Find technical advice on our Transaction Identifier Link support page or get in touch with your Account Manager for further support.

You can expect some initial complexity for older transactions: if no TLID exists, you should send an MIT, receive the generated TLID back via your acquirer, store it, and use it for subsequent related transactions.

‍ If Checkout.com is your only acquirer, then you do not need to send us the TLID, as we store this securely for you and can look it up for each relevant transaction.

Ahead of the deadline, you should plan to store both Trace ID and TLID, passing both of these to your PSP. Mastercard will likely sunset Trace ID in the future. However, Mastercard is not currently declining transactions for missing TLID, but may flag data integrity issues in due course. Be mindful of this, because you would face fees for improper data integrity. 

Read more: Tips for transaction lifecycle management and tokenization

Update your integration with Checkout.com

Even though network updates are intricate, we are always here to support you at Checkout.com. Our team is taking care of all the necessary acquirer-side changes, and proactively communicating the movements on this via our official channels. Please contact your account manager for any questions relating to integration and payment tracking.