3DS Merchant Setup

3D Secure authentication requires merchant information to be presented to the cardholder during the challenge screen. By default, PCI Booking provides its own merchant details, meaning the cardholder sees “PCI Booking” as the merchant name during the 3DS challenge. To display your own merchant name instead, you can provide your merchant details to PCI Booking.

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How It Works

When a 3DS challenge is triggered during card capture, the card network displays merchant information to the cardholder. This information helps the cardholder recognize the transaction and reduces false declines. If you do not provide your own merchant details, PCI Booking’s default merchant information is used. With the default configuration, 3DS authentication is available for Visa and Mastercard cards only. For other networks (American Express, Discover), the 3DS challenge cannot complete, and the outcome is controlled by the UnavailThreeDSAuth parameter of the capture request: with Accept (the default) the card is tokenized without 3DS authentication data, and with Reject the cardholder is redirected to your failure URL.

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Three Scenarios

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You only collect cards

You capture card details on behalf of another entity (e.g. an OTA collecting cards for a hotel), and payment processing happens outside PCI Booking. No additional configuration is needed - set ThreeDS to true on the capture request and PCI Booking’s default merchant information is used for the 3DS challenge. You do not need acquirer details of your own, and nothing in What Information Is Needed applies to you. The one limit to know about: the default merchant covers Visa and Mastercard only. American Express and Discover cards cannot complete the challenge, and what happens to them is decided by UnavailThreeDSAuth on the capture request - Accept (the default) tokenizes the card without 3DS data, Reject sends the cardholder to your failure URL. To cover the other networks, the entity that does process the payments supplies their merchant details and you reference them per request, as in the multi-merchant scenario below.

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You collect and charge directly

You capture card details and process payments directly as the merchant (e.g. an online retailer). Submit your merchant information through the 3DS merchant information form to replace PCI Booking’s default details with yours. The cardholder will see your merchant name during the 3DS challenge.

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You collect and charge on behalf of multiple merchants

You capture cards and process payments for multiple different merchants (e.g. a PMS provider serving multiple hotels). Each merchant needs its own 3DS merchant details.

1. Download the merchant information spreadsheet template.
2. Fill in the merchant details for each of your merchants.
3. Submit the completed spreadsheet to support@pcibooking.net.
4. When generating a card capture form, include the merchantName parameter to specify which merchant’s 3DS details to use for that transaction.

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What Information Is Needed

The data falls into three categories:

• Merchant identity. Business name (as displayed to the cardholder during the 3DS challenge), website URL, and country.
• Acquirer details. The acquiring bank name, plus per-card-network identifiers: Acquirer BIN, Merchant ID (MID), and Merchant Category Code (MCC). Only provide these for the card networks you process (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover).
• Reference. A unique identifier for each merchant, used to match the merchantName parameter in your API calls.

You obtain the acquirer details from your acquiring bank or PSP. The Acquirer BIN, Merchant ID, and MCC usually appear on your acquiring agreement; if you cannot find them, ask your PSP’s support team for your 3DS merchant details for each card network you process. For a single merchant, submit via the online form. For multiple merchants, download the spreadsheet template, fill in one row per merchant, and send to support@pcibooking.net.

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Next Steps