Reminder – Visa’s stored credential framework

In November 2025, Visa introduced new assessments (fees) for its stored credential framework to ensure the correct flagging of stored credential transactions. 

Visa introduced the framework in 2017 in response to the growing number of merchants and digital wallets storing payment credentials and using them for future purchases.

What is a stored credential?

If you store a cardholder’s card number or other information for faster checkout on returning purchases, this is a stored credential.

What does the stored credential framework require merchants to do?

Whenever you store a cardholder’s details for future use, including when processing an initial transaction using a network token, you must:

• Follow the schemes’ disclosure requirements for subscription and unscheduled transactions. If you’re in Europe, you must also follow the EU’s disclosure requirements

• Submit the payment with a property to indicate that you’re storing the cardholder’s details. For our Flow integration, set store_payment_details to enabled or collect_consent, and for all other integrations, set store_for_future use as true 

• Alternatively, you may wish to set up an unscheduled payment agreement at the same time as you store the cardholder’s details to ensure the stored information is valid

• For subsequent recurring payments, you do not need to explicitly provide a property in the request – as these payments will always require you to store the cardholder’s details, we’ll manage this on your behalf

• If the issuer declines the first authorization where you request to store details, do not use the stored credentials for subsequent transactions until you’ve successfully authorized them

• Ensure that you send the correct fields in subsequent Merchant Initiated Transactions. Most importantly, ensure you include the payment_id we return in the response after you first store the cardholder’s details – this helps the issuer link the subsequent payment to the initial one, increasing chance of approval. If you don’t provide a payment_id, we’ll attempt to locate the one from the original transaction and send this on your behalf‍

The benefits 

As well as helping your business follow scheme rules and avoid fees, issuers are more likely to authorize stored card payments that follow the framework. 

If you need advice or support with your stored credentials integration, please don’t hesitate to contact us, we’ll be happy to help.