Introduction to PIN Debit Processing

Customers commonly use debit cards, also called
ATM cards
 or
check cards
, in card-present situations. Your agreement with the debit networks determines whether the customer must provide a personal identification number (PIN).
Debit cards are branded with debit network logos, such as STAR, NYCE, Accel, and Pulse, and often with Visa or Mastercard logos. The logos indicate that the cards are accepted wherever Visa or Mastercard are accepted and are processed through a debit or credit card network.
IMPORTANT
Issuer regulations require that you present the customer with the choice to use their debit card as a debit or credit card.
The customer chooses whether to process the card as a debit card or a credit card. In either case, the money is taken out of the customer's bank account, and the transaction is included on the customer's bank account statement. The customer does not receive a credit card bill as they would with a regular credit card.
Cybersource
 supports PIN debit transactions on
Visa Platform Connect
. PIN debit transactions are supported only in the U.S.

PIN Debit Integration

Follow these steps to integrate PIN debit processing:
  1. Contact
    Cybersource
    or your acquirer to determine whether you are eligible to process PIN debit transactions. As part of this process, the debit networks might require you to complete applications.
  2. Determine whether
    Cybersource
    or your acquirer requires any additional banking information from you.
  3. Determine whether you must comply with any special debit network requirements when processing PIN debit transactions. For example, some networks require that you verify the customer's identity before processing the payment.
  4. Contact customer support so that your
    Cybersource
    account can be configured for PIN debit transactions.

PIN Debit Transactions

PIN debit transactions begin when the customer presents a PIN debit card at the payment terminal.

Figure:

PIN Debit Transaction Flow
Diagram of the PIN Debit transaction flow.
  1. The customer swipes the card through a magnetic card reader, inserts the card into the EMV terminal (contact), or taps the card against an EMV scanner (contactless) on the terminal.
  2. The customer chooses to process the card as a debit card or a credit card.
    IMPORTANT
    Issuer regulations require that you present the customer with the choice to use their debit card as a debit or credit card.
  3. If the customer chooses the debit card option, you request the PIN debit purchase service. The transaction is routed through the debit card networks.
    PIN debit transactions are
    full-financial transactions
    ; they are single message transactions that include an authorization and capture. As such, you do not need to request a separate capture as you would with a credit card transaction.
    If the PIN debit purchase service fails, you can attempt to process the card as a credit card.
  4. If the customer chooses the credit card option, or if the card cannot be used for a PIN debit purchase, process the transaction as a credit card sale, requesting the authorization and capture services together. The transaction is routed through the credit card networks.
    Refer to the
    Payments Developer Guide for the REST API | Visa Platform Connect
    for information about using credit card services to process debit card transactions.
  5. If you need to refund a PIN debit purchase, use the PIN debit credit service.
  6. To reverse a PIN debit purchase or PIN debit credit, use the PIN debit reversal service.
    IMPORTANT
    To request a PIN debit reversal, you must submit the request within one hour of the request that you are reversing.

PIN Debit Network Routing

Listing your preferred network routing codes in your
Business Center
merchant account is an optional setting. To ensure that transactions are routed to networks in your priority order,
Cybersource
recommends including the
processingInformation.networkRoutingOrder
field in PIN debit requests. Set this field to the priority order of the routing networks for the transaction. When you include this field it overrides your merchant account setting. When you do not include this field in your request,
Cybersource
uses the list of network codes in your merchant account.
For Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) transactions, set the
processingInformation.networkRoutingOrder
field to
K
. If you do not include this field in EBT requests, your merchant account must be configured with
K
in the first priority order for network routing.

PIN Debit Processing Versus Credit Card Processing

You can process Visa or Mastercard branded debit cards through the credit card network by using the credit card authorization and capture services, which is the same way that you process credit card transactions.
PIN debit transactions and credit card transactions are processed differently from each other:
  • For a PIN debit transaction, request only the
    authorization
    service. You are not required to request a capture because the
    authorization
    service authorizes the transaction and moves the money.
  • For a credit card transaction, you receive an authorization code indicating an approval. For a PIN debit transaction, you do not necessarily receive an authorization code. Some processors provide an authorization code, but the code is not required in order for you to receive your money. For a PIN debit transaction, you cannot verbally obtain an authorization code from the processor or bank.

PIN Debit Reconciliation

PIN debit purchase and credit data is added to the TC33A capture file for reconciliation purposes only. Use it to verify this information:
  • Merchant ID (MID)
  • Total amount
  • Approved: yes or no
  • Action code

Track Data

PIN debit processing uses track 2 data in purchase and credit requests. When you include track data in a request using the
pointOfSaleInformation.trackData
field, the sentinels are required.
In this example, the track 2 data follows the semicolon (;). The most important parts of the track data are the card number, card expiration year, and card expiration month. In this example, the card number is 4111111111111111, the expiration year is 26, and the expiration month is 12. The end sentinel (?) follows the final character of data recorded on the track.
Track Data Example 
    
;4111111111111111=26121019761186800000?

Terminal IDs

By default, your merchant account is configured to validate a default terminal ID (TID). If you want to override the default TID and send TIDs in the
pointOfSaleInformation.terminalId
request field in PIN Debit requests, contact customer support to configure your account to disable TID validation.

Electronic Benefit Transfer

Public assistance programs use Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) payment cards to issue benefits. In the United States, common EBT benefits categories are food and cash.
This feature enables you to submit purchase, credit, and reversal requests on EBT cards and vouchers. For EBT transactions, only swiped and manually keyed entry are supported. Contactless EMV transactions are not supported.
IMPORTANT
Federal law mandates that you cannot deny an EBT transaction because of technical problems such as a non-working terminal or a non-working PIN pad.
When a technical problem prevents you from initiating an EBT transaction, follow these steps:
  1. Complete an EBT voucher transaction, which is similar to a verbal authorization.
  2. Telephone the issuer to receive the approval information verbally.
  3. Capture all of the approval information on one of the paper vouchers that you received with the EBT network device.
  4. When the EBT system is back online, enter the voucher information into the EBT device to complete the transaction.

Optional Features

This section describes the optional features that are available for PIN Debit processing.