What is 3DS?

Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) regulation in Europe requires the use of 3D Secure (3DS) for card payments.

3DS requires customers to complete an additional verification step with the card issuer when paying. If challenged, we direct the customer to an authentication page served by their bank, and they enter a password associated with the card or a code sent to their phone.

Configure 3D Secure for your Primer account

At Primer, we've decoupled 3D Secure from any underlying processor. Configure 3D Secure in your workflow, and Universal Checkout will handle the rest, presenting a fully in-context and optimized 3D Secure flow to your customer on web and mobile. Now you're SCA-ready with a unified checkout across all your payments services including 3D Secure 2.0.

Primer supports Dynamic 3DS to improve conversion, enabling you to present 3D Secure to customers only when it's absolutely required.

If your card processor does not support third-party 3D Secure, Primer seamlessly redirects the user to the processor's 3DS challenge page instead.

Set up the workflow for 3D Secure

Configuring 3DS settings for your payments takes place within the "Authorize payment" Action. Learn more here about how to set up a workflow to process payments.

Example of setting up a workflow

In the configuration panel, you need to choose which 3DS option you want for all payments processed by this Action block:

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No 3DS

3D Secure will not be used for any payments processed by this block. Payments will be declined when the Issuer requires authentication.

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Adaptive 3DS

Use Primer’s proprietary Adaptive 3DS which will only carry out 3DS authentication if the payment would be declined without it.

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Primer 3DS

3D Secure authentication will be handled by Primer's agnostic 3D Secure solution for payments processed by this block. This could either be a challenge or frictionless.

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Processor 3DS

Your processor will present a 3DS challenge according to their configuration. This isn't compatible with Fallbacks as Primer is not involved in the flow.

Configure your Client Session

To improve 3DS success rates, it is recommended to pass the following elements in the Client Session:

FieldDescription
  1. customer
The customer's email address
  1. customer
The customer's billing address

In Sandbox, the email address and billing address must be provided to trigger 3DS.

Handle 3D Secure in Universal Checkout

Install 3DS SDK

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There are no additional requirements to enable 3D Secure on Web. You are all set to create a payment with 3D Secure!

Execute 3D Secure

Universal Checkout drop-in and headless automatically render the 3DS challenge when required by your workflow.


Test 3D Secure

Go Live

Before going live with 3D Secure, your account has to be configured for each of your processor.

To do so, please get in touch with your contact at Primer with the following information:

  • Acquirer Merchant ID
  • ARN (Acquirer reference number) - per card scheme
    For Amex - this is referred to as the Amex SE number (Service entity)
  • Merchant Category Code