Payment network products and capabilities: Account Updater.

Payment networks have many products and capabilities to manage. Here we are taking a look at the Account Updater and how this is offered by various networks.

Looking at payment network products/capabilities: Account Updater.

This is a separate system to which issuers can send (often via API or batch file) updated card details (mainly PAN only) that may occur as a result of reissuance (or more complex use cases such as portfolio transfer). The payment network makes the updates available or distributes the updates to merchants, acquirers, or PSPs that maintain card details on file. This prevents authorization declines due to expired card details - which is, of course, what both merchants and cardholders want.

Different networks implement it in various ways:

➡️ The updates may be retrieved via pull API by the merchant or by an acquirer / PSP which distributes the updates to its merchants. This requires the merchant, acquirer, or PSP to occasionally poll the Account Updater for potential updates, leaving the possibility to miss updates and encounter authorization declines.

➡️ An alternative is the push model where a merchant subscribes to a range of cards that they have on file. If the issuer updates card details for the subscribed ranges, the network will push the updated card details to the merchant via an API callback. This model has the advantage, unlike the pull model, that merchants cannot miss card detail updates and that authorization requests will always be submitted with valid card details.

➡️ Real-time account updating. In this model, the Account Updater is integrated with the authorization system and will return updated card details in the authorization response to a request with an expired PAN. This model will prevent authorization declines due to expired card details while also providing the merchant with the updated credentials.

➡️ Some of the payment networks have linked their Account Updater to their token vault updating the PAN/token pairing if the PAN got updated. Updates to the tokens are communicated then via the TSP lifecycle management procedures.

It is interesting to see the evolution of implementation patterns. And easy to imagine how merchants and acquirer processors can be confused with this. Or how regional payment networks would struggle with making their choices.