Introduction Acquiring Processing Product Services

Worldline Financial (WL FS) is the largest payment processor in Europe with over 12 billion acquiring processing transactions per year and continues to scale-up rapidly.

Acquiring Processing

Worldline Financial Services offers acquirers a full set of product services to outsource acquiring processing for international brands.

Our products cover the complete acquiring processing value chain from card Acceptance & Authorization Switching, to Clearing and Merchant Settlement.

Modular outsourcing concept

Base Transaction processing has the following main product modules:

• Front Office - Host Acceptance & Authorization Switching to the Issuer
• Back Office - Card Scheme: Clearing, Settlement and Reconciliation

• Scheme & Regulatory Compliance services - Worldline FS offers its acquirers services to help comply with scheme rules and regulatory requirements.

On top of Acquiring Base Transaction Processing services Worldline (WL) Financial Services (FS) offers a comprehensive set of Modular Processing services.

• Merchant Management - Merchant level
• Acquiring Data Services - Acquirer level
• Dispute Management
• Fraud and Risk Management
• Value Added Services

BASE TRANSACTION PROCESSING

Front Office: Acceptance & Authorization (CNP & POS)

Worldline FS offers a variety of card transaction processing products that enable Acquirers and their customers to accept a wide range of card products and brands. Payment channels include: Chip & PIN, Mobile & Contactless, Credential-On-File. Security standards include magstripe, EMV (uses EMV chip and NFC chip), Tokenization (MDES), EMV 3-D Secure v2.0.

The processing of card transactions is divided into two basic generic product services that cover the main volumes of card transactions: Acceptance on the host and Authorization switching to the Issuer. Transaction acceptance processing includes online & offline for eCommerce (Card Not Present) and POS card transactions on the host. Authorization Switching is via the card scheme network to the Issuer (unless otherwise stated in the services).

In addition to the basic card processing products, Worldline FS offers additional services to support extra functionalities. These services comprise the support of additional network protocols, terminal-to-host protocols, host-to-host protocols, offline transactions, premium brands (AMEX, etc.), non-standard transactions (Cash Advance, DCC, etc.).

ATM processing products are part of Value Added Services.

Supported card brands

Scheme: Clearing, Settlement and Reconciliation (Back Office)

The Acquiring clearing portfolio is a comprehensive portfolio of services that offer Acquirers an efficient means of processing card payment transactions into actual Merchant bookings.

As an Acquiring processor, Worldline FS offers Acquirers a range of services geared towards settlement with both the Merchant and the Schemes or Issuers.
In-cloud transaction settlement between the Acquirer and Issuer can be performed if both parties are directly connected to Worldline FS and a bilateral agreement is made between those parties.
Out-cloud transaction settlement between Acquirers and Issuers must be performed by a third-party. Worldline FS provides a clearing file to the Schemes or third-parties for the settlement of these transactions.

Scheme and Regulatory Compliance

In the fast-paced payments industry schemes and regulators are continuously changing regulations and reporting requirements.

Worldline FS offers its acquirers many services to help comply with scheme rules and regulatory requirements.

MODULAR PROCESSING SERVICES

On top of Acquiring Base Transaction Processing services Worldline (WL) Financial Services (FS) offers a comprehensive set of Modular Processing services.

Merchant Management - Merchant level

The Worldline FS (Back Office) Merchant Management cluster offers full and final merchant settlement based on WL FS: scheme clearing, scheme settlement files, merchant pricing engine, and merchant configuration as stored in the merchant contract system.

The Merchant Settlement module is where WL FS converts scheme clearing and settlement input files into a booking per merchant account in SCT/SDD format for the acquirer.

The Merchant Pricing Engine calculates transaction & service fees based on different pricing models.

The Worldline FS merchant contract management system stores Merchant Information such as merchant contract configuration, applicable pricing model, configured fees, and merchant settlement account.

Acquiring Data Services - Acquirer level

The Worldline FS Acquiring Data Service cluster offers RESTful API services to facilitate speedy direct integration of acquirers and their third party customers such as PSPs or large merchants.

The Accept Transactions API enables CNP and POS acceptance via a host-to-host connection to the WLP FO Front Office services. In addition, there is an API service to retrieve near real-time the transaction acceptance status (authorized, captured etc.).

Merchant Management (contract API) allows you to manage and retrieve your own merchant contracts in the Worldline FS acquiring merchant contract database. For third party customer's (e.g. PSP, PayFac, Merchant) retrieval and limited updating is available in agreement with your acquirer.

Back Office retrieval APIs are available for the following types of data: Transactions, Merchant Payments, Merchant contracts, Interchange, Statements (Merchant Reconciliation), Analytics.

To facilitate human interaction with the data, Worldline FS has several User Interfaces that give insight into different types of data: Acquirer Portal, Merchant Portal.

Bulk data is provided to acquirers via 3 main omni-channel Data Warehouse feeds: Authorizations, Clearing, Merchant Payments.

Worldline FS also offers Accounting and Reporting services such as: General Ledger, Financial reports, Custom reports. Regulatory reports and Scheme reports can be found in scheme and regulatory compliance.

Dispute Management

As Acquirer processor Worldline offers acquirers several services to support the different dispute resolution processes of the supported Schemes.

Risk and Fraud management

Worldline FS Risk and Fraud management cluster offers fraud analysis, investigation and monitoring for suspicious behavior.

Value Added Services

Value Added Services cluster includes: ATM, Merchant VAS, DCC, Mobile Top-up, Loyalty programs, Acquirer and Merchant Support, POS Terminal Package, Partnership Models.

Worldline Open Banking products are developed on top of Worldline Open Banking Platform.

All products wrapped up on one central interface supported by user friendly bank selection dialogue - we offer simplified access to 3500 banks.

Want to learn more on Open Banking Products? Switch to Open Banking Products

The Open Banking Platform consists of several components, that you might use depending on the product:

• Access Management Module to define who can access Open Banking Services. We setup your access rights during onboarding phase while you can manage the access rights of your clients (aka initiating parties) if applicable.

• Authorization Module to provide your public certificate and retrieve authorization token.

• Open Banking API to pull account data and initiate payments using your or Worldline's PSD2 license.

• Reach directory to review a list of supported banks and implementation differences between the banks.

• Predefined Bank Selection Interface for better user experience and faster go live.

• Push Notifications API to get notified on events that you subscribed for (e.g. payment status change).

• Back Office allowing to onboard and manage your clients, view transactions and create refunds.

• Credit Scoring Dashboard allowing to search credit scoring requests and view data used for the calculation. 

• Refund API helping merchants to issue account based refunds for a payment processed via Open Banking API.

You already had a closer look on our Open Banking products and would like to learn more on the SEPA Payment Suite?

Single European Payment Area (SEPA) Payments are managed in Worldline by SEPA Payment Suite (SPS) and Payment Gateway. Non-SEPA Payments are managed by Payment Gateway. SPS is the component managing the SEPA relevant transactions and interacts mostly with IBO and Payment Gateway. SPS only manages the SEPA Payments as the name suggests. The main functions of SPS are:

• Mandate Management

• SEPA Direct Debit Management

• SEPA Credit Transfer Management

• SEPA Payment Collection

• Aggregation of SDDs into PAIN 008 and SCTs in PAIN 001 files

• R-Transaction Management

Learn more? Please consult the API description.  

You already had a closer look on our Open Banking products and would like to learn more on iDEAL?

iDEAL is a direct online transfer from account holder's bank account to the bank account of an entrepreneur or merchant.

iDEAL business transactions are based on the 4-Corner-Model which refers to four main actors, who participate in the business process. 
Please note: The iDeal website has an excellent Video and also the European Payments Council has a very good explanation of the four-corner-model that you can find here. 

The Customer, the Initiating Party, the Customer’s Bank and the Initiating Party’s Bank. These business transactions normally consist of two requests: The Transaction Request and the Status Request. 

The Transaction Request: The Initiating Party starts the transaction for the service, selected by the Customer (via the Initiating Party’s web shop). For the Webshop there are three possible ways of integration:

Direct API implementation, via Initiation Service or via Check out Service of Service Providers.

The Customer calls the Routing Service via one of the Initiating Party’s connections. The Routing Service checks the transaction request and forwards the request to the Customer’s Bank. The response message from the Customer’s Bank contains a redirect URL, which is used by the Initiating Party to redirect the customer to the Customer’s Bank. The Customer confirms the request in his well-known online banking application (this could be as example: start a credit transfer, sign an eMandate or provide an identity information). After that, the Customer is redirected to the Initiating Party. Normally this triggers the Initiating Party to perform a status request (see below). Meanwhile the complete request is forwarded from the Routing Service to the Backoffice by JMS (Java Message Service) queue.

The Status Request: The Initiating Party sends a Status Request to the Routing Service and the Routing Service forwards the request to the Customer’s Bank. The Customer Bank checks, whether the transaction has been confirmed by the Customer and provides information in the response. The Routing Service forwards the result of the Status Request to the Initiating Party. Meanwhile the complete request is forwarded from the Routing Service to the back office by JMS queue.

iDEAL 2.0

In the iDEAL 2.0 flow the Merchants have the possibility to directly initiate payments towards the iDEAL 2.0 Hub. Here you see an overview on the participating parties - the TPP Solution (green coloured) is provided by Worldline. 

The iDEAL Hub is a solution owned by Currence which provides a unified iDEAL experience. It is connected to the ASPSP's which provide the iDEAL 2.0 product. The PSU (Payment Service User) / Consumer is account holder by one or more ASPSPs and allows other parties to initiate payments requests. The TPP (Third Party Provider) / Acquirer is an intermediate between multiple Initiating Parties and ASPSPs and provides an interface used by the Initiating Party (as provided by Worldline, routing iDEAL payments).The Initiating Party / Merchant / cPSP  contracts the TPP for the iDEAL service and can sent an iDEAL payment request to the TPP Solution on behalf of a PSU. The ASPSP (Account Servicing Payment Service Provider) /Issuer is the Issuer bank, who is responsible for the Consumer's account.

To check Ideal implementation, please refer to iDEAL 2.0 section 

 Additionally you should also check the following sections: 

• Access Management Module

• Payment API - to learn how to create an Ideal payment transaction

• Push Notifications API (optional) - to learn how you can get notified on payment status changes instead of polling the status by yourself 

• Back Office (optional) - to manage merchant subscriptions, view transactions and issue refunds.

You already had a closer look on our Open Banking products and would like to learn more on Worldline Credit Insight?

Credit Insight, is an Open Banking Product which is based on an AIS collection of transaction data for the selected client. The Credit Insights Service takes the raw balance and transaction data from the bank and transforms this into an insightful financial report. All of the transactions are categorized with a specific focus credit, important data is flagged (e.g. loans, payment rejections) and useful metrics are calculated. All of this is delivered by API to provide  an instant analysis based on data retrieved directly from the consumer’s bank. There are some prerequisites to be consider, if an Credit Insight analysis should be provided:

At least one CHECKING account is provided, 20 transactions within the last 90 days, the transaction currency must be Euro and -an URL for callback must be provided in advance. 

Workflow: 

The Initiating Party (you) posts and initiates a registration for the client, and chooses the relevant product option. Worldline responds with the appropriate URL for the consent and AIS session, and the client is then redirected to Worldline bank selection pages. Once the client has selected its bank(s) and accounts, Worldline collects the transactions and balances for the last three months from the bank(s). The Credit Insight analysis is performed, and once the results are available, they are sent to the Initiating Party's callback URL.

For Credit Insight the relevant and usable endpoints are within the Account Information extended service. 

Learn more? Please consult the Credit Insight section

Additionally you should also check the following sections: 

• Access Management Module

• Reach directory - to consult what banks are connected to our platform and how you can identify implementation differences across banks

• Bank Selection Interface - to implement Worldline's predefined screens for bank selection and redirection to/from the bank 

• Back Office (optional) - in case you would like to manually check your transactions or manage setup of your clients in Worldline's systems

• Credit Scoring dashboard (optional) - to check balances and transactions used for credit score calculation

You already had a closer look on our Open Banking products and would like to learn more on Account Validation?

Worldline Account Validation enables merchants to verify whether a cardholder's account exists when setting up recurring or bill payments. It is also used for validating a 'card-not-present' purchase before execution or submitting an authorization request for the full amount of a recurring payment, without affecting the availability of the cardholder's funds.

Additionally, Worldline Account Validation allows payers to confirm whether an issuer will accept a payment transaction on behalf of a specific payee for the actual transaction amount. This confirmation occurs before collecting funds from the payer and initiating the payment transaction authorization to credit the recipient's account.

To implement Account Validation, please have a look at the Account Information section. 

In addition, you will need to handle end user's bank selection and redirection to your software. For faster integration and better user experience we offer Worldline Bank Selection Interface - a set of predefined screens that could be customized with your branding allowing to choose the banks and handling the complexity of different PSD2 authorization flows (redirect / decoupled / embedded), so that you will be able to focus on your product and leave the boring stuff to us.

Additionally you should also check the following sections: 

• Access management module

• Reach directory - to consult what banks are connected to our platform and how you can identify implementation differences across banks

• Bank Selection Interface (optional) - in case you would like to implement Worldline's predefined screens for bank selection and redirection to/from the bank 

• Back office (optional) - in case you would like to manually check your transactions or manage setup of your clients in Worldline's systems

You already had a closer look on our Open Banking products and would like to learn more on Worldline Business Financial Management?

As a software provider you developed a solution allowing your business clients to handle their accounting, reconciliation, Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable.

By implementing Worldline Business Financial Management solution, you will be able to automate bank feed import and initiate outgoing payments (e.g. payments for company expenses).

In addition, you will need to handle end user's bank selection and redirection to your software. For faster integration and better user experience we offer Worldline Bank Selection Interface - a set of predefined screens that could be customized with your branding allowing to choose the banks and handling the complexity of different PSD2 authorization flows (redirect / decoupled / embedded), so that you will be able to focus on your product and leave the boring stuff to us.

Depending on your use case (e.g. accounting or supplier invoice payments) you might be interested in the following sections:

• Access Management Module

• Account-to-Account - it describes possible authorization flows and how the Payment API supports those.

• Payment API - it describes the Payment API on a high level.

• Account Information - it descibes possible authorization flows and how the Account information API supports those. 

• Reach Directory API for Payment and Data - it describes how to query the reach directory and interpret it's response. The reach directory will tell you which banks are connected to our platform and how you can identify implementation differences across banks.

• Bank selection Interface (optional) for Payment and Data  - in case you would like to implement Worldline's predefined screens for bank selection and redirection to/from the bank 

• Push Notification API (optional) - to learn how you can get notified on payment status changes instead of polling the status by yourself 

• Back Office (optional)- in case you would like to manually check your transactions or manage setup of your clients in Worldline's systems

You already had a closer look on our Open Banking products and would like to learn more on  Worldline Account to Account Payments?

As a merchant or a PSP you can accept a new payment method in addition to cards, so that clients can pay you via bank transfers directly from their bank account. You would need to add a new payment method to your checkout screen and integrate our Payment API.

In addition, you will need to handle bank selection and redirection to the bank and back to your shop. For faster integration and better user experience we offer Worldline Bank Selection Interface - a set of predefined screens that could be customized with your branding allowing to choose the banks and handling the complexity of different PSD2 authorization flows (redirect / decoupled / embedded), so that you will be able to focus on your product and leave the boring stuff to us.

The bank will process the payment once it was approved by the end user and according to the regular cut-off times which normally depend on the selected payment product (e.g. SEPA Instant payment or standard SEPA SCT payment). Then your bank will credit your bank account and you will be able to reconcile your bank statement with transactions recorded in the back office using our Account Data API.

Want to learn more? Please consult the API description.  In addition you should also read the following sections:

• Access Management Module 

• Refund API - to initiate refunds towards your clients. Contact us for more information.

• Reach Directory - it describes how to query the reach directory and interpret it's response. The reach directory will tell you which banks are connected to our platform and how you can identify implementation differences across banks.

• Bank Selection Interface (optional) - in case you would like to implement Worldline's predefined screens for bank selection and redirection to/from the bank 

• Push notifications API (optional) - to learn how you can get notified on payment status changes instead of polling the status by yourself 

• Back office (optional) - in case you are a PSP and would like to manage your merchants or view their activity