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What are co-badged cards?

A co-badged card refers to a debit or credit card that supports multiple card schemes. This is usually:
  • an international network, such as Visa and Mastercard
  • paired with a local brand, like Cartes Bancaires (France) or Dankort (Denmark).
Some regions have specific requirements that must be implemented in order to be compliant with local regulations.It is your responsibility to meet these compliancy criteria.

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Regulations

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European Economic Area (EEA)

In the European Union, the Regulation (EU) 2015/751 sets the rules on how merchants should handle co-badged cards. If you accept one of the following card networks, you are impacted by the regulation and must follow the guidelines outlined below:
  • Bancontact (Belgium)
  • Cartes Bancaires (France)
  • Dankort (Denmark)
Other local card networks are available as co-badged cards in Europe - however only the three above can be used today for online card payments, and therefore are relevant for these guidelines.

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Guidelines

Identify the supported card schemes
You do not have to accept all card networks. However, when the customer is about to enter their card details, you must make it transparent and clear which card networks are accepted. This can be done by presenting the logo and/or name of all the supported card networks.
If you decide to present the logo, they must have the same clarity, size and quality.

Example of displaying supported card networks

Choice of payment brand
If you accept all the card networks available on the customer’s co-badged card, you must enable the customer to choose which network they want to pay with. You are free to set a default card network or pre-select one in order to reduce friction and optimize for cost. However, you must always honor the choice of the customer if they decide to override your preference. In the case of recurring payments, the card network selected by the customer when they first entered their card must be honored for all subsequent payments. To provide your users with the most seamless UX, we recommend you to use Primer Universal Checkout to automatically detect the networks as the user enters their card number.

Choice of payment brand

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Compliancy

This regulation was put in place in 2016. Visa started conducting audits with the acquirers on the 31st of December 2023. Failing to comply with the regulation exposes you to penalties defined by the acquirer and the card brand.
It is worth noting that “Bancontact Cards” is for now considered by Primer to be an independent payment method, and not a card network.

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Other countries

Some countries outside of the EEA have other regulations related to co-badged cards. This is the case for Australia (with EFTPOS cards) and Saudi Arabia (with Mada cards). Primer does not support these card networks at the moment. This documentation will be updated when these card networks are added to Primer.

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Get started with Drop-in Checkout

This feature is currently not available on Drop-in Checkout

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Get started with Headless Checkout

In order to be compliant with the regulations, Headless Checkout enables you to
  • detect the networks of the card number entered by the user
  • retrieve the logo of each card network
  • pass the card network selected by the customer to Primer
This feature is currently not available on React Native

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Example projects

Feel free to use these example projects to get started quicker:

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Pre-requisites

This guide assumes that you have already integrated a card form with Headless Checkout. Make sure to follow the “Get Started with Headless Checkout” first.

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Step 1. Set the list of supported card networks in the client session

When creating a client session, it is recommended to pass the list of the card networks supported for this particular session. This ensures that the customer is not asked to choose a card network that you do not accept. The card network should be sorted in order of preference. This enables us to identify the default card network to consider if the user enters a co-badged card.
JSON
// POST /client-session
{
	"paymentMethod": {
		"orderedAllowedCardNetworks": ["VISA", "CARTES_BANCAIRES", "MASTERCARD"]
	}
}
With the example above:
  • If the user enters a “Visa & Cartes Bancaires” card, the default network will be Visa
  • If the user enters a “Mastercard & Cartes Bancaires” card, the default network will be Cartes Bancaires
Learn more about orderedAllowedCardNetworks in the API Reference.

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Step 2. Detect the card networks

On Web, the card form is implemented using PCI-compliant hosted fields that can be put anywhere on the web page.When the customer enters their card number, Headless Checkout retrieves the list of card networks available on the card. The list of card networks is passed to the developers through a callback called onCardNetworksChange.
Typescript
const cardManager = await headless.createPaymentMethodManager('PAYMENT_CARD',
{
  onCardNetworksChange({
    source,
    detectedCardNetworks,
    selectableCardNetworks
  }) {
    // Handle the detected card networks
  }
})
This callback returns the following data:
  • source
    Where the card networks come from.
    • LOCAL if the card networks come from the SDK, usually by leveraging the first few digits.
    • REMOTE if the card networks come from Primer’s server
    • LOCAL_FALLBACK if Primer’s server fails to be reached. This works similarly to LOCAL.
  • detectedCardNetworks.items
    The list of all the detected card networks, including the ones that are not allowed.
  • detectedCardNetworks.preferred
    The first allowed card network in the detected card networks. Can be undefined if the user entered a card that is not allowed.
  • selectableCardNetworks.items
    The list of all the detected card networks that can be selected by the user. selectableCardNetworks is undefined if Headless Checkout does not detect a co-badged card.
  • selectableCardNetworks.preferred
    The card network selected by default, according to the order set in orderedAllowedCardNetworks. selectableCardNetworks is undefined if Headless Checkout does not detect a co-badged card.
The card networks returned by onCardNetworksChange are objects that contain the network id, its display name, and a flag allowed stating if the card network is in orderedAllowedCardNetworks.
Learn more about onCardNetworksChange in the API reference.

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Less than 8 digits

If the user enters less than 8 digits, Headless Checkout cannot detect co-badged cards. Instead, Headless Checkout tries to detect major card networks using data available locally.In this case:
  • source is set to LOCAL
  • detectedCardNetworks.preferred contains the card network you should present to the user
  • detectedCardNetworks.items contains all the detected card networks
  • selectableCardNetworks is always undefined

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8 digits or more

If the user enters 8 digits or more, Headless Checkout attempts to make a request to Primer to retrieve the list of card networks available on the card using our BIN data.In this case:
  • source is set to REMOTE
  • selectableCardNetworks is only available if the user has entered a co-badged card and both its detected networks are allowed for this session
    • selectableCardNetworks.items contains the list of card networks from which the user can select
If Headless Checkout fails to contact Primer, Headless Checkout falls back to a local detection (similar to when less than 8 digits are entered). In this case, source is set to LOCAL_FALLBACK .
Let’s say orderedAllowedCardNetworks is ["CARTES_BANCAIRES", "VISA", "MASTERCARD"]If the user enters a card that is co-badged Visa and Cartes Bancaires:
  • detectedCardNetworks.items is CARTES_BANCAIRES and VISA
  • detectedCardNetworks.preferred is CARTES_BANCAIRES
  • selectableCardNetworks.items is CARTES_BANCAIRES and VISA
  • selectableCardNetworks.preferred is CARTES_BANCAIRES
If the user enters a card that is only Visa:
  • detectedCardNetworks.items is only VISA
  • detectedCardNetworks.preferred is VISA
  • selectableCardNetworks is undefined
If the user enters an Amex card (not allowed for this session):
  • detectedCardNetworks.items is only AMEX
  • detectedCardNetworks.preferred is undefined
  • selectableCardNetworks is undefined

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Example

Typescript
const cardManager = await headless.createPaymentMethodManager("PAYMENT_CARD", {
  onCardNetworksChange({
    source,
    detectedCardNetworks,
    selectableCardNetworks,
  }) {
    if (source === "LOCAL_FALLBACK") {
      // feel free to send an event to your backend
      console.warn("Cannot detect card networks");
    }

    if (selectableCardNetworks) {
      // if `selectableCardNetworks` is non-nullish,
      // then ask the user to select a card network
      // you can use `selectableCardNetworks.preferred` to pre-select the card network
      return showCardNetworkSelect(selectableCardNetworks.items);
    }
    // show the detected card network
    showAllowedCardNetwork(
      detectedCardNetworks.preferred || detectedCardNetworks.items[0]
    );
  },
});

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Step 3. Present the list of card networks and handle the selection

It is now your responsibility to present the list of card networks to the customer and enable them to choose the network they want to pay with.To support you, Headless Checkout exposes the logos and human readable names of each card network via the AssetsManager.
Typescript
// After headless checkout is started
const assetsManager = headless.createAssetsManager();

const { cardUrl } = await assetsManager.getCardNetworkAsset('CARTES_BANCAIRES')
Learn more about getCardNetworkAsset in the API Reference.

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Step 4. Create a payment with the selected card network

When the user clicks on “Pay”, call the submit function with the selected card network to let us know which card network the customer chose.
Typescript
cardManager.submit({
  cardNetwork: "CARTES_BANCAIRES"
});
If cardNetwork is not present, Primer follows the order of preference given by the option orderedAllowedCardNetworks passed in the client session API.

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Step 5. (Optional) Show the list of the supported card networks

We highly recommend you to present the list of allowed card networks close to the card form.You can retrieve orderedAllowedCardNetworks on the Web SDK by listening to onClientSessionUpdate. After that, you can use
Typescript
const primer = await Primer.createHeadless(clientToken, {
  // Other options and callbacks
  onClientSessionUpdate({ paymentMethod: { orderedAllowedCardNetworks } }) {
    showCardNetworks(orderedAllowedCardNetworks)
  },
})
Learn more about onClientSessionUpdate in the API Reference.

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Testing co-badged cards

Primer Sandbox Processor supports a few co-badged test cards to enable you to test your integration. You can find them in the list of test card payments.

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Integrations

This is the current list of integrations that provide support for co-badged cards:
  • Worldline SIPs
  • Stripe

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Notes

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Slow and unreliable internet connection

When the customer’s network connection is slow or unreliable, it is possible that the customer finishes entering their card details before Universal Checkout retrieves the card networks. In order to keep the friction low, it is important to note that Universal Checkout does not block the creation of a payment while the card networks are being retrieved or if the card networks could not be retrieved at all. This means that, if a co-badged card is entered, the customer is not guaranteed to be presented a card choice before they submit their card details.

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Selected card network on the payment method data

In the case of a card payment, you can get the selected network by looking at paymentMethodData.network.
We recommend against using paymentMethodData.binData.network as it only contains the international card network.