Merchants processing debit card payments should consider adding PINless Debit to their payment ecosystem. This is not just a consideration, it’s a strategic move to offer faster, more cost-effective transactions.
PINless debit is a debit transaction in which a PIN entry is not utilized. It can include card-present transactions but is most commonly associated with card-not-present (CNP) and e-commerce transactions. CNP debit card transactions can use the signature debit rails of both Visa and Mastercard, along with regional networks.
After the PINless Clarification passed in July of 2023, merchants have never been more incentivized to offer and accept debit card transactions. This clarification prohibits issuers and networks from preventing merchants from using a specific network when routing debit transactions. This led to 100% issuer support of PINless debit capability on all debit cards, resulting in transactions routed through networks other than the one associated with the card brand. Merchants today can choose between routing debit payments through a global card network or doing so through a regional debit card network—with more competitive rates.
Today, over 65% of debit cards are eligible for routing through a lower-cost, regional network.
While lower transaction costs are universally desirable, implementing the logic, routing, and orchestration of PINless Debit may only benefit merchants with relatively high debit card payment volumes.
Before developing their own PINless Debit Routing Strategy, merchants should answer these five questions:
- What is my debit volume?
- What is my industry and MCC code?
- What is my estimated cost savings potential on these transactions?
- Does my processor support PINless?
- What is the internal level of effort to enable PINless Debit Routing?
Below are some advantages and disadvantages of undertaking a PINless Debit Routing strategy and how a flexible payment vault can help.
Benefits of PINless Debit to Merchants
Assuming the industry and volumes are acceptable, PINless debit transactions can save merchants as much as 100 basis points compared to transactions routed through the signature Visa or Mastercard rails.
According to the experts at Optimized Payments, these savings result from lower network and interchange fees and not charging licensing or digital fees that come with the signature card networks.
Regional networks like Pulse, Star, Shazam, and Accel are known as “Back-of-card networks” instead of the global, signature “front-of-card networks” like Visa, Mastercard and Discover. Look at your debit card and find these networks on the front and back!
Traditionally, the back-of-card brands that supported PINless debit required the user to enter their PIN to verify the transaction. This limited the growth of back-of-card brands compared to their global counterparts, who have been able to process debit card transactions without the customer having to enter their PIN for much longer.
As a merchant, processing the same card on multiple networks—both signature and PINless debit regional networks—allows routing decisioning that can lead to improved transaction approval rates. Smart routing between signature and PINless networks can ensure that if a transaction is denied through one channel, it is seamlessly forwarded to the next available channel for approval. (This process is also known as cascading.)
The customer experience remains unchanged, meaning merchants can improve their business economics without worrying about reducing conversion rates.
Complexities of PINless Debit
Each merchant's situation will be different when determining a PINless Debit strategy, and it starts with their choice of payment processor.
Knowing what MCC code applies to your business is critical because that will be the starting point for determining interchange rates.
Next, find out whether your processor supports PINless debit. Routing transactions from Visa or Mastercard to specific networks can eat into profit margins and eliminate the cost savings PINless debit intends to deliver. Understanding the BIN and the transaction network processing can influence the routing and overall cost. A BIN table can be accessed from an acquirer, third-party, or built internally. Each option has different costs, usage, and accuracy questions.
If the processor does not support PINless debit, ask whether it plans to support this service. If so, ask at what level it provides routing logic.
If the processor does not support PINless debit, it’s important to establish whether and how soon it will be on the product roadmap. As PINless eligibility increases from historical averages of 40% to more than 65% of debit cards, merchants and processors must prioritize offering this payment modality.
Vaulting the Debit Card
A feature not included in PINless debit transactions is tokenization, a process for securing debit card payments by replacing cardholder details and PAN with randomly generated data strings.
These “tokens” act as a surrogate for the real data, preventing them from theft in case of a hack or data leak. By masking these details using tokenization, you are fulfilling PCI-DSS compliance obligations. Without tokenizing PINless debit card transactions, PCI compliance requirements will shift, requiring additional time and resources and impacting your business.
Partnering with a flexible payment vault like Basis Theory enables a merchant to tokenize any PINless debit details and store that data in the Basis Theory vault. On-demand, the merchant could access that data to approve a transaction without the cardholder having to input their PIN.
This means a merchant can process PINless debit card payments and unlock the ability to route transactions to the most cost-effective network and PSP, driving down costs.
Hear from an insurance company working with Basis Theory to streamline payments for individual policyholders.
