As a merchant making use of a multi-currency account, we wish to bring the following to your attention
Mastercard and Visa regulations prohibit intraregional transactions and as a result no multi-currency processing of intraregional transactions is permitted via Planet Payments in a foreign currency. As a result of this, a change is being implemented by our team to ensure compliance to the requirement.
What is an intraregional transaction?
An intraregional Transaction is a transaction that occurs at a Card acceptance location in the same country as the country in which the Card was issued.
For example, a card issued in South Africa is used to purchase from a merchant located in South Africa. “Domestic Transaction” is an alternative term for intraregional Transaction
What does this mean for you as a merchant?
Any locally issued card may not make purchases in a foreign currency, on a foreign domain where the business is South African and has a locally hosted website.
In other words, a South African cardholder must make their purchase in Rands and not foreign currency.
What is required by you as a merchant?
You will need to be aware that any domestic cardholder transaction attempted, on a foreign domain and/or in a foreign currency, will be rejected on an attempt.
How does a domestic cardholder then make purchases from your store?
A domestic cardholder can purchase on a domestic site in ZAR (they may not for example, purchase in USD)
OPTIONS;
- If you can route locally issued cards to your ZAR site so that their purchases can be made, this will assist in an improved customer experience. This can be done by messaging on your site.
- If you host a local (South African) domain website displaying and selling in ZAR, refer your customers to this site
- If you have a currency converter, allowing South Africans to select ZAR as the currency in which they make the purchase, this will alleviate the foreign currency restriction.
The above requirement is one provisioned by schemes and acquirers and reserve bank limitations; and the consequences of accepting such payments can result in fines being levied against the Bank and the Payment Gateways who facilitate these transactions. We have been requested by the acquirer (Absa) to immediately cease processing these transactions and therefore this notice to you as a matter of urgency.
Methods to Route Domestic Customers to pay in the Local currency when using Multi-Currency
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We trust that this is clear and should you have any further questions in this regard, please send these to [email protected]
thanks
Peach Payments Support Team