Requirements for financial institutions

Last updated: October 9, 2024

Due to requirements implemented by Visa and Mastercard Europe, any business categorized as a financial institution (MCC 6012) must provide additional information when processing any Europe domestic transactions through their account.

The scope for these changes varies slightly between Visa and Mastercard:

Visa: applies to all merchants categorized as MCC 6012 on all domestic payments in Europe
Mastercard: applies only to merchants categorized as MCC 6012 for domestic UK debit card payments being used to pay off a credit or prepaid card.

The term financial institution encapsulates businesses that, for example, issue payday loans, handle mortgage repayments, or facilitate the paying off of credit card balances. These are businesses that fall under the Merchant Category Code 6012.

If your business falls into this area, you will be required to submit additional information with all your transactions.

If your company is a financial institution, you must provide additional information about the primary recipient of the funds when you process a transaction with us. The primary recipient is the person who ultimately receives the funds. These include the primary recipient's:

date of birth
account number
postcode
surname


1{
2  "recipient": {
3    "dob": "1991-12-30",
4    "account_number": "8573498821",
5    "address": {
6      "zip": "W1T"
7    },
8    "last_name": "Smith"
9  }
10}

Field name	Description	Example	Length
`account_number` required string	Visa: Provide the first six digits and the last four digits of the primary recipient's card, without any spaces. Or, the first 10 digits of the primary recipient's account number. Mastercard: Provide the first six digits and the last four digits of the primary recipient's card, without any spaces.	`8573498821`	10
`dob` required string	The date of birth of the primary recipient, in the format `YYYY-MM-DD`	`1991-12-30`	8
`address.zip` required string	The first part of the UK postcode. For example, W1T 4TJ would be `W1T`.	`W1T`	6
`last_name` required string	The first six characters of the primary recipient's surname. Only alphabetic characters are allowed.	`Smith`	6

Requirements for financial institutions

What is a financial institution?

What do I need to do?

Example request

Body parameters