Dynamic Transaction Descriptors allow merchants to define the information that appears on a customer's credit card statement on a per-transaction basis. Without dynamic descriptors, the merchant DBA name on file with Heartland will be populated on the cardholder statement. With dynamic descriptors, merchants can add transaction-specific details to a shortened version of the merchant DBA name. This is intended to help customers recognize transactions on their statement and reduce the number of cardholder disputes and chargebacks, and is most frequently used by "Payment Facilitators" (otherwise known as aggregators) who have multiple sub-merchants that need to be distinguished.

The dynamic Merchant Name value is sent to the card issuers to display on cardholder statements. Portico includes the dynamic MerchantName in the authorization response.  Merchants can display the dynamic Merchant Name on printed or online receipts, so customers are notified how the transaction appears on their statement.

The Maximum characters of the dynamic Merchant Name, inclusive of the TxnDescriptorFormat length plus the separator, is 22 characters for MasterCard and 25 characters for Visa and Discover.  Merchants processing via the Exchange host are limited to a maximum of 22 characters for all card brands.

The value passed in the TxnDescriptor field provided on CreditSale or CreditAuth request transactions is only used when the merchant is configured correctly.

Restricted Characters

The following special characters must not be used in the dynamic Merchant Name passed in the TxnDescriptor field :

• < (less than)
• > (greater than)
• % (percent)
• & (ampersand)
• + (plus)
• ' (single apostrophe)
• " (quotation mark)
• \' (backslash-escaped apostrophe)
• \" (backslash-escaped quotation mark)
• ( (opening parenthesis)
• ) (closing parenthesis)
• ; (semicolon)  

 

Merchant Configuration

To enable Dynamic Transaction Descriptor functionality, there are settings that must be configured on Portico for the DeviceId:

Settings	Value/Description
AllowTxnDescriptor	Must be True.
ShortDBAName	If used, contains the prefix value to appear on the statement for all transactions for the DeviceId; may be 3, 7 or 12 characters in length.
TxnDescriptorFormat	Valid Values are:  0 - Turns off descriptor functionality; any value passed in the request message is ignored 1 - Indicates the merchant will not use ShortDBAName and the full value for the cardholder statement will be sent in the transaction request; any value stored in ShortDBAName is ignored 3, 7, 12 - Sets the length of the ShortDBAName

Using Short DBA Name

When ShortDBAName is used, Portico generates a merchant name by concatenating the value stored in ShortDBAName with the TxnDescriptor field provided on CreditSale or CreditAuth request transactions.

The ShortDBAName is separated from the TxnDescriptor by a "*" in a fixed position based on the TxnDescriptorFormat length; the characters populated are set by the value in TxnDescriptorFormat. If the ShortDBAName value is fewer characters than the value in TxnDescriptorFormat, it will be space-filled to the separator.

Examples
If the TxnDescriptorFormat = 3	The first 3 characters of the value in ShortDBAName are placed in the first three positions, the separator "*" is fixed in position 4 and the TxnDescriptor Maximum characters is 18 characters.
If the TxnDescriptorFormat = 7	The first 7 characters of the value in ShortDBAName are placed in the first three positions, the separator "*" is fixed in position 8 and the TxnDescriptor Maximum characters is 14 characters.
If the TxnDescriptorFormat = 12	The first 12 characters of the value in ShortDBAName are placed in the first three positions, the separator "*" is fixed in position 13 and the TxnDescriptor Maximum characters is 9 characters.

 

Using Passthrough

Merchants passing through a dynamic merchant name should follow the same pattern of [short DBA name] {space] [asterisk] [descriptor name]. 

If a value is stored in ShortDBAName, it will not be used when the TxnDescriptorFormat indicates passthrough.