Update your integration for SCA
Learn how to update your integration to avoid declined payments due to Strong Customer Authentication (SCA).
Updating your integration to support Strong Customer Authentication consists of the following steps:
- Identify your payment flow
- Determine your integration path
- Implement the new integration path
- Test dynamic authentication
Start updating your integration today. After your integration is live, 3D Secure authentication is displayed when required by SCA.
1. Identify your payment flow 
First, identify the payment flow that most closely matches your business. Read more about various flows to design a payment flow for SCA.
| Payment flow | Description | Example Business Scenario |
|---|---|---|
| One-time payments | You charge the customer’s cards immediately after they confirm payment. | E-commerce |
| Recurring payments | You charge the customer on a recurring basis. | Gym membership for fixed-amount recurring charges, or utility bill for metered billing |
| Payments with separate authorize and capture within 7 days. | You separately authorize and capture card payments within 7 days after the customer confirms payment. | Ridesharing |
| Payment captured more than seven days after authorization. | You charge the customer’s card more than 7 days after they submit payment details. | Crowdfunding, or car rental if final amount may change. |
| Other off-session payments | You save the customer’s cards and charge some time later when the customer is not available to complete authentication. | N/A |
2. Determine your integration path
Choose an integration option based on your payment flow below:
One-time payments
For one-time payments, you can complete the full integration today.
Stripe Checkout
Get prebuilt, conversion-optimized checkout flows with minimal code. Choose this option if you prefer a low-maintenance integration. For this payment flow, you can complete the full integration, and handling exemptions doesn’t require any additional work.
- See how to integrate Stripe Checkout to learn more.
Payment Intents API
Build dynamic payment flows and custom checkout pages by migrating to the Payment Intents API with one of our client libraries:
For this payment flow, you can complete the full integration, and handling exemptions requires no additional work.
- See how to use the Payment Intents API to learn more.
Recurring payments
SCA requires customers to complete 3D Secure for some payments. When this step is required by the bank, the customer must be online to complete authentication. This introduces complexity for businesses that save cards and charge them later when the customer is no longer on the website or application and can’t complete authentication. This is also known as off-session payments. Examples of this include fixed-amount subscriptions, metered-billing subscriptions, crowdfunding campaigns, and car rentals.
Stripe products and APIs now allow merchants to meet SCA requirements for off-session payments:
Mandate collection. A mandate represents the agreement you have with the customer on how you plan to use their card in the future. In your checkout flow, add some consent text. State that by completing checkout, the customer consents to your initiation of payment on their behalf. State the anticipated frequency of payments. Explain how the amount of the payments will be determined.
Strong authentication of the first transaction. Merchants are required to authenticate the customer when the mandate is set up. This can either be done by the first payment with the card or when saving the card to a customer without making an initial payment.
Flagging subsequent transactions. Any payment made with a saved card when a user is off-session must be marked accordingly, with reference to the first authenticated transaction. Stripe handles this for you.
By updating your payments integration to use these new APIs and flows, Stripe can request exemptions such as fixed-amount subscriptions and merchant-initiated transactions to process later payments made with a saved card. However, banks can decide to reject a request for exemption. Build a way to notify customers that they need to return to your application and complete authentication if required.
Stripe Billing with the new version of Checkout
Checkout is a prebuilt checkout page that lets you collect payments and manage simple subscriptions with a single integration.
- See how to build subscriptions to learn more.
Stripe Billing
Take advantage of automated tools to protect your revenue and scale your business. Build your own custom checkout experience.
- Update your client-side integration to save and reuse cards.
- Then, implement SCA-changes for Stripe Billing.
Off-Session Payments with the Payment Intents API
Build your own off-session payments logic and handle getting users back on-session to complete re-authentication as needed. While this approach takes more work than using Stripe Billing, it provides more flexibility.
There are three parts to building an off-session payment flow:
- Save a card to a customer. You can save a card to a customer in a checkout flow (as the customer is making a payment) with the Payment Intents API, or outside of the checkout flow with the Setup Intents API. You can also use Stripe Checkout to save cards to a customer in a checkout flow or outside of the checkout flow.
- Use a saved card to make a payment. Once you have cards saved to a customer, you can make both on-session or off-session payments.
- Build a recovery flow. While Stripe requests exemptions to reduce the need for customer reauthentication, there is always a risk that the cardholder’s bank will reject the exemption request. You should always build a recovery flow to bring a customer back on-session in case they need to authenticate again.
Payments with separate authorize and capture within 7 days
For payments with separate authorize and capture, you can complete the full integration today.
The new version of Stripe Checkout
Get prebuilt, conversion-optimized checkout flows with minimal code. Choose this option if you prefer a low-maintenance integration. For this payment flow, you can complete the full integration today, and no additional work will be needed to handle exemptions.Use Stripe Checkout with separate auth and capture
Use Stripe Checkout with separate auth and capture
Payment Intents API
Build dynamic payment flows and custom checkout pages by migrating to the Payment Intents API with one of our client libraries:
For this payment flow, you can complete the full integration, and handling exemptions requires no additional work.
- See how to use the Payment Intents API to learn more.
Payment captured more than seven days after authorization
SCA requires customers to complete 3D Secure for some payments. When this step is required by the bank, the customer must be online to complete authentication. This introduces complexity for businesses that save cards and charge them later when the customer is no longer on the website or application and can’t complete authentication. This is also known as off-session payments. Examples of this include fixed-amount subscriptions, metered-billing subscriptions, crowdfunding campaigns, and car rentals.
Stripe products and APIs now allow merchants to meet SCA requirements for off-session payments:
Mandate collection. A mandate represents the agreement you have with the customer on how you plan to use their card in the future. In your checkout flow, add some consent text. State that by completing checkout, the customer consents to your initiation of payment on their behalf. State the anticipated frequency of payments. Explain how the amount of the payments will be determined.
Strong authentication of the first transaction. Merchants are required to authenticate the customer when the mandate is set up. This can either be done by the first payment with the card or when saving the card to a customer without making an initial payment.
Flagging subsequent transactions. Any payment made with a saved card when a user is off-session must be marked accordingly, with reference to the first authenticated transaction. Stripe handles this for you.
By updating your payments integration to use these new APIs and flows, Stripe can request exemptions such as fixed-amount subscriptions and merchant-initiated transactions to process later payments made with a saved card. However, banks can decide to reject a request for exemption. Build a way to notify customers that they need to return to your application and complete authentication if required.
Off-Session Payments with the Payment Intents API
Build your own off-session payments logic and handle getting users back on-session to complete re-authentication as needed. While this approach takes more work than using Stripe Billing, it provides more flexibility.
There are three parts to building an off-session payment flow:
- Save a card to a customer. You can save a card to a customer in a checkout flow (as the customer is making a payment) with the Payment Intents API, or outside of the checkout flow with the Setup Intents API. You can also use Stripe Checkout to save cards to a customer in a checkout flow or outside of the checkout flow.
- Use a saved card to make a payment. Once you have cards saved to a customer, you can make both on-session or off-session payments.
- Build a recovery flow. While Stripe requests exemptions to reduce the need for customer reauthentication, there is always a risk that the cardholder’s bank will reject the exemption request. You should always build a recovery flow to bring a customer back on-session in case they need to authenticate again.
Other off-session payments
SCA requires customers to complete 3D Secure for some payments. When this step is required by the bank, the customer must be online to complete authentication. This introduces complexity for businesses that save cards and charge them later when the customer is no longer on the website or application and can’t complete authentication. This is also known as off-session payments. Examples of this include fixed-amount subscriptions, metered-billing subscriptions, crowdfunding campaigns, and car rentals.
Stripe products and APIs now allow merchants to meet SCA requirements for off-session payments:
Mandate collection. A mandate represents the agreement you have with the customer on how you plan to use their card in the future. In your checkout flow, add some consent text. State that by completing checkout, the customer consents to your initiation of payment on their behalf. State the anticipated frequency of payments. Explain how the amount of the payments will be determined.
Strong authentication of the first transaction. Merchants are required to authenticate the customer when the mandate is set up. This can either be done by the first payment with the card or when saving the card to a customer without making an initial payment.
Flagging subsequent transactions. Any payment made with a saved card when a user is off-session must be marked accordingly, with reference to the first authenticated transaction. Stripe handles this for you.
By updating your payments integration to use these new APIs and flows, Stripe can request exemptions such as fixed-amount subscriptions and merchant-initiated transactions to process later payments made with a saved card. However, banks can decide to reject a request for exemption. Build a way to notify customers that they need to return to your application and complete authentication if required.
Off-Session Payments with the Payment Intents API
Build your own off-session payments logic and handle getting users back on-session to complete re-authentication as needed. While this approach takes more work than using Stripe Billing, it provides more flexibility.
There are three parts to building an off-session payment flow:
- Save a card to a customer. You can save a card to a customer in a checkout flow (as the customer is making a payment) with the Payment Intents API, or outside of the checkout flow with the Setup Intents API. You can also use Stripe Checkout to save cards to a customer in a checkout flow or outside of the checkout flow.
- Use a saved card to make a payment. Once you have cards saved to a customer, you can make both on-session or off-session payments.
- Build a recovery flow. While Stripe requests exemptions to reduce the need for customer reauthentication, there is always a risk that the cardholder’s bank will reject the exemption request. You should always build a recovery flow to bring a customer back on-session in case they need to authenticate again.
Note
If you don’t use Stripe.js, the legacy version of Checkout, or our mobile SDKs to collect payment details, contact support or connect with our sales team.
3. Implement the new integration path
You need to make server-side and client-side changes.
Server-side
Use the Payment Intents API to create a payment. A PaymentIntent tracks the lifecycle of a customer checkout flow and triggers additional authentication steps when required by SCA.
Follow the migration guide to learn how to migrate from the Charges API to the Payment Intents API.
Client-side
In order to dynamically display 3D Secure authentication for card payments, client-side changes are also required alongside server-side changes for the Payment Intents API.
Follow the guides to learn how to use the Payment Intents API with Stripe.js & Elements, iOS, and Android.
Using Stripe Checkout
Follow the guides to integrate Checkout for one-time and subscriptions.
4. Test dynamic authentication
To verify that your updated integration handles 3D Secure correctly, be sure to test both successful and unsuccessful authentication flows, using the regulatory test cards.
By default, 3D Secure authentication is only shown when the customer’s bank requires it, so your checkout conversion isn’t negatively affected. As of September 14, 2019, your updated integration displays the 3D Secure authentication flow automatically whenever required by SCA.