VAU Background: Visa Account Updater (VAU) enables a secure electronic exchange of account information updates between participating Visa card issuers and acquirers for credential-on-file (COF) merchants, which enables a more seamless payment process. When participating issuers re-issue cards, they submit the new account number and expiration date to VAU. Participating merchants send inquiries on their customer’s stored credentials to VAU and are provided with updated card information, if available. This helps acquirers to proactively update buyer credentials prior to any purchase transaction. In addition to purchase transactions, VAU also supports Visa Direct (OCT and AFT) and merchandize returns transactions.
VAU Issuer Stop Advice API: The VAU Issuer Stop Advice API is a secure, scalable, and high-performance web service/API for issuers and issuer processors to send VAU requests to place stop advice to prevent updates for specific cardholder PAN(s) and merchant(s) combinations from being shared.
The benefit of VAU Issuer Stop Advice is that an issuer can block a merchant from getting an automatic VAU update (e.g., following reported fraud) while still allowing their cardholder to transact with the merchant where appropriately authorized by the customer.
The functionality allows VAU issuers to place cardholder level Stop Advice at a merchant level. Issuers can use the VAU Issuer Stop Advice feature to prevent updates from being shared with specific merchants. VAU Issuer Stop Advice only block the VAU update and do not result in Visa declining the transaction.
Stop Advices are different than stop payment orders that issuers can place using Visa Stop Payment Service (VSPS) as VAU Issuer Stop Advices only blocks automatic credential updates.
For issuers or issuer processors, this new VAU Issuer Stop Advice API solution brings the possibility to integrate their web-based applications thereby avoiding manual process of placing the stop advice on VAU application on VOL.
Issuers already using VAU application on Visa Online to place stop advices separately on VAU and Real Time VAU will have the option to use the API. The VAU Issuer Stop Advice API is an additional channel to supplement issuers placing stop advices manually using the VAU application on Visa On-line (VOL).
All Visa Account Updater programs in production require the originator to be a licensed Visa issuer or be sponsored by a licensed Visa issuer who is ready and able to sponsor Visa Account Updater programs. Please reach out to your Visa account representative to get more information about Visa licensing requirements.
NOTE: The test cases contain sample PANs and do not pass Luhn’s (Mod-10) validation. They can be used in the sandbox as is. If you are testing outside the sandbox, please turn off the check for Luhn’s (Mod-10) validation while using these PANs.
Visa Account Updater Issuer Stop Advice API can be used by developers in the sandbox after registering in Visa Developer Center (VDC), verify login and set up sandbox environment. However, when a client is ready to move to production, then, there are few steps needs to be followed depending on whether a client is brand new to VAU and using API only, or existing batch client and wants to use API. Please review the implementation steps.
If you are a new user to VAU, please first contact your Visa representative. Review VAU terms of use, and other documentation with legal, technical, operational, and customer proposition teams.
NOTE: The VAU Issuer Stop Advice API is primarily meant for issuers/processors who are already sending credential updates to Visa Account Updater.
NOTE: The test cases contain sample PANs and do not pass Luhn’s (Mod-10) validation. They can be used in the sandbox as is. If you are testing outside the sandbox, please turn off the check for Luhn’s (Mod-10) validation while using these PANs.
The Issuer invokes the secure VAU Issuer Stop Advice API to send Visa the requested VAU stop advice for a specific cardholder(s).
Visa validates the issuer sending the API request and routes the request to VAU.
VAU processes the issuer request and applies the stop advice if the merchant and/or PAN record(s) are found.
Visa returns a response indicating that the stop advice was applied successfully or, in case of process errors, a reject message.
NOTE: The VAU Issuer Stop Advice API is primarily meant for issuers/processors who are already sending credential updates to Visa Account Updater.
The following are the implementation steps for existing clients using API and new clients using API only.
Visa Account Updater Issuer Stop Advice API can be used by developers in the sandbox after registering in Visa Developer Center (VDC), verify login and set up sandbox environment. However, when a client is ready to move to production, then, there are couple of steps needs to be followed depending on whether a client is brand new to VAU and using API only, or existing batch client and wants to use API.
As a new user to VAU, please first contact your Visa representative. Review VAU terms of use, and other documentation with legal, technical, operational, and customer proposition teams. Submit a completed VAU enrollment form and enroll merchants and receive VAU Segment ID.
The following are the implementation steps for existing clients using API and new clients using API only.
Implementation Steps for an existing VAU client:
Existing Visa Account Updater (VAU) clients should follow these steps to implement the VAU Issuer Stop Advice API
1 |
Register as a user on the Visa Developer Center (VDC) portal, if necessary. |
2 |
Create a project on VDC Portal in sandbox environment if needed. For Help: Working with Visa APIs - Create Project If a project is already created previously, skip this step.
|
3 |
Download VDC user ID and password, project key and certificate, MLE key and certificate to access VDC sandbox. |
4 |
Add the VAU Issuer Stop Advice API in the project created in Step 2. |
5 |
Download the test cases from VDC portal from the dashboard under 'Assets' menu and 'Sample Code' tab. |
6 |
Develop and test code in sandbox environment using the test cases from above. The test cases includes the sample VAU segment, test PANs (not-Mod 10) and will work only in the sandbox environment |
7 |
When ready to move to production, contact the Client Support team in your region (project manager for EU) to inform your decision. |
8 |
The Client Support team/project manager updates the VAU admin application to add API functionality. |
9 |
To promote the project to production, initiate the Going Live process from the dashboard on the VDC portal by selecting your project and selecting Going Live. For more information on Go Live process, please review Info on Going Live |
10 |
You will receive a notification from your VDC admin/project manager with confirmation that the Going Live request has been accepted and you are able to use API in production. |
| 11 | Select authentication method: either X-Pay Token, Two-Way SSL, both. If Two-Way SSL is selected, you will be prompted to upload a certificate signing request (CSR). |
| 12 | Submit the CSR for MLE if using Two-Way SSL. |
| 13 | VDC admin generates certificates and informs the client to download and add new project certificates to a keystore. |
| 14 | Sign a VDC contract specific to the VAU Issuer Stop Advice API. Contract must be approved by VDC admin. |
| 15 | The VDC admin performs project registration and approves the project to deploy in production environment. |
| 16 | Receive notification from VDC via email with instructions to download production project key/certificate, user ID and password, and MLE Key/certificate. |
| 17 | Update the production configuration parameters in your code with the information from Step 16 to begin using the VAU Acquirer API in production. |
| 18 | Perform production validation by sending production VAU API requests and sharing with the project manager the X-Correlation-ID, date, and time of requests |
Implementation Steps for a new VAU client:
New Visa Account Updater (VAU) clients should follow these steps to implement the VAU Issuer Stop Advice API.
1 |
Register as a user on the Visa Developer Center (VDC) portal, if necessary. |
2 |
Create a project on VDC Portal in sandbox environment if needed. For Help: Working with Visa APIs - Create Project If a project is already created previously, skip this step. |
3 |
Download VDC user ID and password, project key and certificate, MLE key and certificatecertificate to access VDC sandbox. |
4 |
Add the VAU Issuer Stop Advice API in the project created in Step 2. |
5 |
Download the test cases from VDC portal from the dashboard under 'Assets' menu and 'Sample Code' tab. |
6 |
Develop and test code in sandbox environment using the test cases from above. The test cases includes the sample VAU segment, test PANs (not-Mod 10) and will work only in the sandbox environment. |
7 |
As a new issuer/processor to VAU, contact your Visa representative to inform your interest in using the API. |
8 |
Your Visa representative or Client Services team will send the VAU issuer enrollment forms. Review the Visa Account Updater Terms of Use and other documentation with legal and technical teams and fee schedule in Visa OnLine. |
9 |
Submit a completed VAU enrollment form for your region. |
10 |
When ready to move to production, contact the Client Support team (project manager for EU) in your region to inform your decision and request a VAU issuer segment. |
11 |
The Client Support team/project manager will enroll the issuer in VAU admin application. |
12 |
The Client Support team/project manager will share the newly created VAU Segment ID via email to be used in the VAU Issuer Stop Advice API |
13 |
When satisfied with testing and ready to go live, initiate the Going Live process on the VDC portal by selecting your project and selecting Going Live from the Dashboard. For more information on Go Live process, please review Info on Going Live. |
| 14 | You will receive a notification from your VDC admin/project manager with confirmation that the Going Live request has been accepted. |
| 15 | Select authentication method: either X-Pay Token, Two-Way SSL, both. If Two-Way SSL is selected, you will be prompted to upload a certificate signing request (CSR). |
| 16 | Submit the CSR for MLE if using Two-Way SSL. |
| 17 | The VDC admin generates certificates and informs the client to download and add new project certificates to a keystore. |
| 18 | Sign a VDC contract specific to the VAU Issuer Stop Advice API. Contract must be approved by VDC admin. |
| 19 | VDC admin will perform project registration and approve the project to deploy in production environment. |
| 20 | Receive notification from VDC via email with instructions to download production project key/certificate, user ID and password and MLE Key/certificate. |
| 21 | Update the production configuration parameters in your code with the information from Step 16 to begin using the VAU Issuer Stop Advice API in production. |
| 22 | Perform production validation by sending production VAU API requests and sharing with the project manager the X-Correlation-ID, date, and time of requests. |
| North America | Asia-Pacific | Europe | CEMEA | LAC | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
VAU Issuer Stop Advice API is Message Level Encryption (MLE) enabled on VDP. As this API request/response body has PAN information, the client must need to encrypt the API request body and then call the API. The client must then need to decrypt the API response body to see the updated PANs information.
Clients using VAU Issuer Stop Advice API are required to support MLE in both certification and production environment.
Refer to the Message Level Encryption guide at the Visa Developer Center website for instructions on using MLE.
To view availability of all products, refer to the Availability Matrix.
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