Table of contents
What is SCA?
Strong customer authentication (SCA) is a regulation established by the EU as a requirement in 2019 for those in the EEA (European Economic Area), the UK, and Morocco. In Australia, SCA compliance is dependent on the bank and whether the transaction is considered low-risk or low-value, determined by Stripe.
SCA involves a 2-factor code authorization on all customer-initiated transactions in order to mitigate credit card fraud.
For our users, this mainly affects UK and Australia customers, but Canada may also be affected with some banks.
Important: this process will require you to be in direct contact with the customer involved as SCA authentication so that they can provide an authentication code sent to their mobile number.
Authorizing payments
When any credit card transaction or payment rerun is made, you will be prompted to authenticate the payment using the SCA process. Click “continue” to be redirected to a new tab with a preselected bank based on the card attached to the payment.
Note: if you go back to the MyStudio tab, you will see a popup that says payment was successful. However, the payment will actually show as "pending" in the payment history until you follow the steps in the new tab!
Follow the prompts of sending the authentication code to the customer. These steps may look slightly different between banks, but we will outline a couple examples below.
Example: Capital One
After getting redirected and seeing the Capital One authorization page, you will select to send a temporary code to the customer. Click “continue.”
Select the phone number the code will go to and continue.
The code will then be sent to the customer, who will then need to tell you the code in order for you to submit and authenticate the purchase. Once submitted you will receive a success message.
Example: TD Bank
After getting redirected and seeing the TD Bank authorization screen, you will select which mobile number to text a temporary code to the customer. Click “continue.”
The customer will receive a code and you will enter the code on the transaction details screen. Once submitted, you will receive a success message.
Failures and Notes
- The SCA authentication code steps must be done in order to verify the purchase. If this is not done, the payment will remain in "pending" until you complete the process or until enough time has passed.
- If enough time passes between the purchase and not doing the authentication code steps, the payment will go into a failed past due status and you will have to rerun the payment.
- If you do the code steps and the authentication fails, you will see a "failure" screen. This will result in the payment going into a failed past due status and you will have to rerun the payment.