Card On File

What's Card On File?

Card on File (COF) transactions are used by merchants to send financial and non financial (card validation) transactions with stored credentials.

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This functionality is valid for credit and debit cards.

Most of these transactions do not contain CVV as PCI rules prevent the establishment from storing this information. However, it is important to consider that a merchant may have validated the CVV in a previous transaction, such as the first Card On File transaction.

Examples of segments that use this type of modality are streaming services, education services, gyms and subscriptions, among others.

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Warning

Card On File transactions can be recurring or not.

Why use Card On File?

Card On File allows for greater flexibility in online purchases, since it does not ask the cardholder to send all the data again (including the CVV); it is also possible to notice a better sales conversion rate since in the process for using the COF initiated by the merchant, necessarily, there is already a previous transaction initiated by the cardholder that already assists in the authorization of the transaction by the issuer.

The use of Card On File can improve the conversion of recurring transactions and retry attempts for card-not-present transactions.

How to use Card On File?

First, it is necessary to store the card, and then it is possible to use the Card On File marking.

• If it is the first transaction (with or without financial value) of a stored card, send the CardOnFile.Usage field with the value "First".
• From the second transaction onwards, send the CardOnFile.Usage field with the value "Used".

Node example CardOnFile:

	"CardOnFile":{
            "Usage": "Used",
            "Reason":"Recurring"

What not to do?

Do not send the Card On File marking for transactions without the stored card.

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Important

Before storing the card, it is very important to use Zero Auth with CVV to validate the card data.

Supported brands

Card On File supports the following brands:

• Mastercard
• Visa
• Elo

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For Mastercard Card On File transactions, it is necessary to send the transaction initiation indicator node (Payment.InitiatedTransactionIndicator) to inform whether the transaction was initiated by the shopper or the merchant. Learn more at Mastercard Transaction Initiation Indicator.