Charge Lifecycle

A charge is a card transaction including its complete lifecycle. A new charge request will trigger a sequence of processes, indicated in the diagram below.

The authentication process determines whether it is actually the cardholder themselves who initiates the transaction. For card-present transactions several authentication methods exist which are covered in more detail in the Authentication section.

A card payment authorization is the process of a merchant sending an authorization request to the card network to check with the cardholder’s bank if the transaction (charge) is permitted and if there are sufficient funds on the account. When the cardholder's bank approves the authorization request, the amount will be reserved on the cardholder’s account.

Clearing is the process of submitting the required transaction data to the card networks, in order for reserved funds to be transferred from the cardholder’s account to the merchant’s account. This clearing process determines the net financial positions of the acquirers and issuers before the settlement occurs.

The Settlement process involves the transfer of funds between the acquirers and issuers through the card networks to settle the net financial positions between them. Once the settlement is completed the acquirer receives the funds and can pay the merchant. Silverflow is not part of the settlement process itself but supports its clients with data to support the reconciliation of the settlement funds and the payout to the merchants.

Reconciliation is the process where the received settlement funds will be matched with the individual charges that were sent for clearing as well as providing insights into other mutations that have impacted the settlement amount, such as scheme fees or chargebacks.

Silverflow support a wide range of identifiers in order to support the identification, retrieval and reconciliation of actions performed on the platform.

For any action performed or unique information a key will be generated by Silverflow. For example chargeKey is the Silverflow generated identifier for a transaction and this identifier will then be contained in the Authorization response, to be referenced in several follow up actions such as refunds or manual clearing. The chargeKey will also be present in reconciliation details to identify the settlement information for that particular transaction.

For any action performed by an Agent the platform allows for attaching a client side generated reference. This allows the customer to use their own identifier when interacting with the Silverflow platform and aid their own reconciliation processes. For example when creating a 3DS authentication or creating a charge, an Agent has the option to pass a transactionReference which will then be returned in the response and also be present in the reconciliationDetails. The transaction reference can also be used to link together all actions related to the lifecycle of a transaction. For example 3DS authentication, authorization and reconciliation.

Where a customer performs an action on a charge, for example manual clearing, they can pass an action reference which will then be present in reconciliationDetails. This can be helpful if performing multiple manual clearing actions for a single authorized amount.

In the authorization process the Charge response provides several card network identifiers such as the systemTraceAuditNumber (DE11), the retrievalReferenceNumber (DE37), the banknetReference and traceId for Mastercard and the transactionIdentifier for Visa transactions.

When a transaction enters the clearing stage the most common identifier is the ARN/RRN - Acquirer Reference Number / Retrieval Reference Number which is created by Silverflow on behalf of the Acquirer that provides a unique field for each clearing action sent to the card network.