Dynamic Descriptor

Learn more about descriptors

A descriptor is the reference that appears on the customer's card or bank statements. Having a clear reference that appears on your customers account explaining the transaction can help towards your Dispute Management.

The issuing bank and card scheme mandate that this reference clearly demonstrates the company responsible for the transaction that has been processed.

There are two choices you have as a merchant:

• Set a static descriptor that will be the same for all payments processed against your account – this is configured when you set-up the account with your acquiring partners.
• Create a statement that contains a static value, followed with a dynamic value. This method allows you to add a unique reference to the descriptor that appears on your customers' statements. You can add a customer reference or agreement number for example.

In most cases, the issuing bank will display the descriptor consistently, but please be aware that on occasion, the issuer will not display the descriptor correctly.

Descriptor Requirements

Your descriptor must meet the following requirements:

• Contains between 5 – 22 characters (including spaces).
• Does not contain any special characters - i.e. ! # $ % & ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? @ [ ] ^ _ `{ | } ~
• Accurately represents your business name.

If you choose to use our dynamic descriptor functionality, we recommend to keep the static value between 2 – 10 characters. This will allow your dynamic value to be included in full.

Dynamic Descriptor Example

If your business name is: Acquired, you may wish to add a customer reference (123456) to the descriptor to allow your customer to have more information on the transaction that has been processed.

If you do not utilise a dynamic descriptor, the customer's bank statement would be displayed as: Acquired.

If you do incorporate dynamic descriptor into your integration, the customers bank statement would be displayed as: Acquired 123456.

Implementation

After you have contacted support and they have configured your static value within the Hub, you can begin to pass through the dynamic values. To do so, please set the dynamic value within merchant_custom_3 of your request message.

We have built the solution so you can pass through the dynamic value within merchant_custom_3 for all your acquirers.

{
    “timestamp”:“20200620101530",
    “company_id”:813,
    “company_pass”:“password”,
    “company_mid_id”:1045,
    “vt”:“”,
    “useragent”:“”,
    “request_hash”:“f0a18260b08a0bfacb…..“,
    “transaction”:{
      “merchant_order_id”:“a9f0ce93-6f0d-4a15-a18b-45f1304b4bc0”,
      “transaction_type”:“AUTH_CAPTURE”,
      “amount”:“14.99”,
      “currency_code_iso3":“GBP”,
      “subscription_type”:“INIT”,
      “merchant_customer_id”:“”,
      “merchant_custom_1":“”,
      “merchant_custom_2":“”,
      “merchant_custom_3":“123456”
    },
    “customer”:{
      “customer_fname”:“Edward”,
      “customer_lname”:“Johnson”,
      “customer_ipaddress”:“127.0.0.1",
      “customer_dob”:“1988-10-03"
    },
    “billing”:{
      “cardholder_name”:“”,
      “cardnumber”:4000011180138710,
      “cardcvv”:123,
      “card_exp”:“022020”,
      “billing_street”:“Suite 2, 4th Floor”,
      “billing_street2":“44 Baker Street”,
      “billing_city”:“London”,
      “billing_state”:“”,
      “billing_zipcode”:“W1U7AL”,
      “billing_country_code_iso2":“GB”,
      “billing_phone”:“+44(0)2039826580”,
      “billing_email”:“support@acquired.com”
    },
}