Learn how Account Updater integrates with your application for seamless account updates to tokenized credit cards.

Businesses that need to securely access stored cardholder data for future transactions such as card-on-file billing or to process recurring charges– face the unique challenge of keeping their customers’ credit and debit card data up to date. On any given billing cycle, a merchant may be unable to bill 25 to 30 percent of their customers because of invalid card data. Customers’ credit and debit cards have either expired or were replaced due to theft, loss or fraud. Businesses processing card-on-file or recurring payments incur significant expenses as a result of expired and cancelled cards.

Element Payment Services has partnered with Visa, and MasterCard to address this challenge through technology called Account Updater. Account Updater is designed to work in two ways, giving Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) the option to support one or both functionalities within their applications:

• Decline-Triggered Requests for Update: The software application is set to auto flag declines. If a merchant is enrolled in the Account Updater service, every time a transaction is declined, the card is automatically flagged for update. At the end of the day all cards that have been flagged are sent to Account Updater.
• Merchant-Initiated Requests for Update: The software application is configured in a manner that allows each merchant to specifically check a card stored in Element’s PCI DSS compliant data storage facility to see if an update is available (The card does not need to have been previously declined). When a merchant creates a record, they can choose to flag the record to be enrolled in the Account Updater program. This will allow merchants to check for updates prior to a customer’s scheduled billing date.

Software vendors can provide Account Updater to their customers by integrating this technology via our API. Once the application is integrated with Element’s Account Updater, it then works in conjunction with Element’s TransForm™ tokenization technology, which securely stores cardholder information offsite to facilitate future transactions.

For more information on integrating your application with Account Updater, feel free to view our specifications or contact us.

How Does Account Updater Work?