Trace IDs will be required for Mastercard Merchant Initiated Transactions

As you may be aware, since October 2022, in the UK and EEA regions, Visa has required the previous_payment_id of an initial transaction to be provided with subsequent Merchant Initiated Transactions (MITs) in a series. If the previous_payment_id is not sent then Visa will look to assess non-compliance fines.

Mastercard will now be aligning with this Visa requirement.

You must be providing a trace ID (previous_payment_id) on Mastercard MITs by June 1, 2023. On 30 July, 2023, Mastercard will start to issue assessments (fines) to any merchants who are not compliant.

From March 1, 2023, Mastercard will begin monitoring MITs, including recurring and subscription transactions, to ensure that they are correctly flagged and contain a valid previous_payment_id. The Data Integrity Monitoring Program has been amended to check MITs in the United Kingdom and select countries in Europe*.

Please see our API reference and docs for more details.

What you need to do

To prevent potential scheme assessments (fines) from July, please ensure that, for your Mastercard transactions:

• You’re sending the correct payment_type based on the type of transaction you are initiating – Regular, Recurring, MOTO or Installment
• merchant_initiated transactions are flagged as true
• You’re sending the previous_payment_id of the initial transaction used to set up the recurring series when sending a subsequent MIT to Checkout.com.

This can be either a Checkout.com payment_id (format pay_XXX) or the scheme_id (format: 12345… or ABCDE…) returned with the first transaction.

Why is Mastercard making this update?

With the use of stored credentials increasing in recent years, the previous_payment_id gives schemes more visibility of the transaction risk when making authorization decisions.

You should already be providing the correct flags and previous_payment_id for Visa transactions.

Timeline

Mastercard’s timeline for these changes are as follows:

• March 1, 2023, Mastercard will start monitoring MITs.

• April 1, 2023, Mastercard will begin to notify merchants who are not in compliance.

• June 1, 2023, all transactions must be compliant to avoid assessment.

• July 30, 2023, assessments (fines) will begin to be issued.

^{*Countries affected are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom.}