Visa Buffs Up 3DS

Telling the difference between good and bad transactions is a tough balancing act for e-commerce merchants. Too loose an attitude will encourage the fraudsters, too tight an attitude will run-off good customers who would have been a conversion.

Visa wants to help merchants navigate that narrow passage with better tools to separate the conversion wheat from the fraudulent chaff — without disrupting the consumer at the point of checkout.

And that help is on the way — with EMVCo’s expected release of a new and improved 3-D Secure specification.

The new specification, referred to as 3-D Secure 2.0, includes updates and enhancements that make a greater exchange of data between merchants and issuers possible. The new release will also allow for greater risk-based and dynamic authentication.

To prepare for the coming upgrade to EMVCo’s specs, Visa has begun an internal upgrade of Verified by Visa (VbV) and the Visa Consumer Authentication Service (Visa’s issuer 3-D Secure support provider) for 3-D Secure 2.0. Currently, the expected timeline will see early industry adoption in mid-2017 in markets around the world.

With the new Verified by Visa for 3-D Secure 2.0 standard in place, merchants will be better able to more seamlessly integrate the authentication process into the shopping experience with a less invasive more user-friendly authentication method. Issuers will have greater visibility into a larger data set to help them make informed transaction decisions faster. Consumers will get a faster and more secure transaction still backed by the Visa standard that insulates them from liability for fraudulent transactions.

As for the full implementation of the program — that remains under development — so that stakeholders in each market have a reasonable amount of time to implement the solution once certified products and services are available, certain rules will not take effect until the program activation date. Those products will include fraud chargeback protection on merchant-attempted 3-D Secure 2.0 transactions, according to Visa.

In Europe, a region that is already relying heavily on risk-based authentication, Visa expects a program activation date of April 2018. The program activation dates for other markets will be announced separately.