Immersve facilitates payments on the Mastercard® network by implementing the required card payment protocols. The main protocol instructions are: Authorization, Clearing, and Settlement.
Authorization
An Authorization message is sent when a cardholder taps their card at a payment terminal or when an e-commerce payment gateway authorizes a card payment. In response to an Authorization request, Immersve must check the validity of a card and check if funds are available. At this point the transaction is initialized, with an initial hold being made on the funds. Authorization messages are received and processed in real-time. Authorized funds are no longer available to the cardholder for withdrawal or spend. Authorizations that have not yet cleared appear to the cardholder as “pending” transactions.
Clearing
A Clearing message indicates finalization of a payment. In an e-commerce setting, this often happens after order fulfillment. A clearing message may have a value that is greater or less than the authorized amount. Authorized funds are not settled until cleared.
Authorizations expire when not cleared. The expiry period is between 7 and 30 days dependent upon the particulars of the Authorization. Cardholders regain full control of funds held by expired Authorizations.
Settlement
All cleared payment transactions need to be paid to Mastercard by Immersve. The process of paying out cleared transactions is referred to as Settlement. Settlements are conducted by Immersve at a cadence as instructed by Mastercard. An Immersve partner organisation does not actively participate in the settlement process nor have visibility of it.
Card Presentation
Card presentation describes how a card was presented to the merchant when a payment was authorized: a physical or virtual card, at a terminal or remotely, and with the card's own PAN or with a network token issued to a digital wallet or a merchant. Three attributes on each Transaction record it. The same attributes are sent on custodial payment notifications, as cardType, cardPresent, and tokenRequestor.
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| card | Whether the card was issued as physical or virtual, as on the Card's type. |
| card | Whether the card was at the point of sale, as classified by the payment network. true for a card inserted, swiped, or tapped at a terminal, including a phone or watch tap and a manually keyed card at an attended terminal. false for e-commerce, in-app, mail order, and telephone order payments, and for a merchant charging a card it has stored on file. |
| token.requestor | Who a network token was issued to, present only when a token was used instead of the card's own PAN: apple-pay, google-pay, merchant for a card the merchant has stored on file, or other for a token requestor Immersve does not name. Clients must tolerate unknown values. |
cardPresent and token reflect the network message that created the payment.
The payment network reports a contactless plastic tap and a wallet tap with the same entry mode; only the token tells them apart. Combine the three attributes to identify the presentation.
| Presentation | card | card | token.requestor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plastic card at a terminal | physical | true | absent |
| Phone or watch tap at a terminal | physical or virtual | true | apple-pay or google-pay |
| Online checkout with the card PAN | physical or virtual | false | absent |
| Online or in-app checkout with a wallet | physical or virtual | false | apple-pay or google-pay |
| Merchant charging a stored card | physical or virtual | false | merchant |
The attributes are returned by the List Transactions and Get Transaction endpoints and sent on the Payment Updated webhook, where the card type is card.type. Payment notifications carry them too. See the Custodial Funding Protocol guide.