Introduction to Level II and Level III Processing

For business to business customers, Level II and Level III processing can provide lower interchange rates in exchange for providing more information during a transaction.
Level II processing includes additional customer and tax information for the transaction.
Before you can use Level II processing with American Express, you must contact American Express and obtain approval to process Level II transactions.
Level III processing includes line-item data for each transaction.
This document provides guidelines that indicate which fields are required to obtain the best interchange rates. These guidelines are based on industry information available at the time of publication.
Cybersource
 recommends that you contact your acquirer for the most current information requirements, as these requirements can change at any time.

Level II Data

Level II cards, which are also called
Type II cards
, provide customers with additional information on their credit card statements about their purchases. Level II cards enable customers to easily track the amount of sales tax they pay and to reconcile transactions with a unique customer code. There are two categories of Level II cards:
  • Business/corporate cards are given by businesses to employees for business-related expenses such as travel and entertainment or for corporate supplies and services.
  • Purchase/procurement cards are used by businesses for expenses such as supplies and services. These cards are often used as replacements for purchase orders.
Each processor supports a different set of Level II fields. If your business is not in the United States, you must use additional fields.
Support for Level II processing is processor and card specific. See Supported Processors and Card Types: Level II for a list of the supported card types for your processor.
To activate Level II processing for American Express, contact American Express and
Cybersource
 Customer Support.
.
Introduction to Level II and Level III Processing

Level III Data

You can provide Level III data for purchase/procurement cards, which are used by businesses for expenses such as supplies and services. These cards are often used as replacements for purchase orders. The Level III data is forwarded to the company that made the purchase. It enables the company to manage its purchasing activities.
Check with your processor to determine whether you need to add Level III processing to your contract or account setup. Support for Level III processing is processor and card specific. See Supported Processors and Card Types: Level III for a list of the supported card types for your processor.
When you are ready to go live with Level III processing, contact Customer Support to have your account configured to process Level III data. If your account is not enabled and you try to send Level III transactions, you will receive an error for invalid data.
IMPORTANT
Unless otherwise specified, Level III transactions must include Level II data.
Introduction to Level II and Level III Processing

Cybersource
 Level II and Level III Data Processing

Cybersource
 does not store Level II and Level III data. Rather, it functions as a pass-through service for the data. Thus, if you request multiple partial captures or credits for an order, you must include the Level II and Level III data in each request.
During data processing, minimal validation is performed in order to minimize interference with business policies between the merchant and customers.
If Level III transactions produce batching errors while data is transmitted to the processor, the Level III processing field is disabled (value set to
N
) and the merchant is sent a message showing the change in status. When this happens, the request is not rejected, and the disabled processing field is included in the status message.
  • For credits and captures, the disabled field is
    orderInformation.invoiceDetails.level3TransmissionStatus
For example, when a capture transaction produces batching errors, the
orderInformation.invoiceDetails.level3TransmissionStatus
 field is set to
N
.
Cybersource
 recommends that you include the total order amount in the authorization request, when authorizing Level III transactions. Doing so ensures that your total order amount is used and that the capture or credit request total amount matches the original authorization total amount.
IMPORTANT
If you omit required Level II and Level III fields from a request, the transaction does not fail. It is processed successfully. This could result in higher fees or penalties assessed against your account. Contact your processor to ensure that you understand your processor's specific requirements for Level II and Level III transactions.
Introduction to Level II and Level III Processing

Relaxed Requirements for Address Data and Expiration Date

To enable relaxed requirements for address data and expiration dates, contact customer support. For details about relaxed requirements, see Relaxed Requirements for Address Data and Expiration Dates.
Introduction to Level II and Level III Processing

Using Decimals and Strings

Cybersource
 uses decimal points in all amount and tax rate fields;
Cybersource
 does not use implied decimal points. For example, if the amount of the product being purchased is 29.95, set that field to
29.95
.
For tax rates used with Level III transactions, you need to include a decimal point in the value. For example, if a tax rate is 1%, you should set that field to
0.01
.
For many of the fields described in this document, Visa and Mastercard permit different lengths for alphanumeric (string) input.
Cybersource
 accepts any length you provide. If the value you provide is longer than the payment card company permits,
Cybersource
 truncates the value, keeping the left-most portion of the value. If the value you provide is shorter than the payment card company requires,
Cybersource
 pads the field before sending it to the processor.
Introduction to Level II and Level III Processing