SCA guidelines update

The European technical guidelines for SCA, particularly for credit card payments via the new version of 3-D Secure, are raising questions among online stores. How do you handle these stricter authentication requirements for payments? And how do they affect conversion? In this update, Buckaroo answers some frequently asked questions.

The key thing to know: as a Buckaroo customer, you don't need to do anything.

The deadline for applying Strong Customer Authentication to electronic payments was September 14, 2019. By that date, parties in the payment chain across Europe had to be ready for SCA. SCA mainly affects online card payments, because several changes to the payment flow are needed to comply with the new guidelines. Payment methods such as iDEAL and Apple Pay already comply with the SCA guidelines, because authentication takes place through multiple factors.

However, many parties in the payment chain had not fully implemented the required SCA changes for card payments, or had not done so before the deadline. De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) therefore gave these parties a limited amount of additional time, mainly to prevent conversion on online card payments from dropping.

On October 16, 2019 a request for an extension was submitted to the European Banking Authority (EBA). The new deadline is December 31, 2020.

The extension gave parties extra time to:

1) Implement the updated authentication method for online card payments via 3-D Secure 2.0, or more precisely version 2.1 or 2.2. The SCA guidelines require an extra authentication step for online credit card payments.

2) Set up the SCA exemptions for online card payments.

As communicated earlier, Buckaroo will make sure the necessary SCA changes for both points are in place on time. This means Buckaroo customers don't need to change anything themselves for now. Buckaroo will make sure that all changes required to comply with the new guidelines are implemented in the Buckaroo checkout process on time.