Regional considerations

Integrate Terminal in the United Kingdom

Stripe supports Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover payments in the United Kingdom. All transactions must be made in British pounds (GBP). To accept Terminal charges in the United Kingdom, either your platform account or connected account must be in the United Kingdom.

Use locations

Create Locations for your business with addresses in the United Kingdom and associate your readers to them. This will ensure that they automatically download the configuration needed to properly process charges in the United Kingdom. A valid address for a Location in the United Kingdom must contain the line1, city, postal_code, and country properties.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/terminal/locations \
  -u 
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
  -d "display_name"="HQ" \
  -d "address[line1]"="448A Crownhill Rd" \
  -d "address[city]"="Plymouth" \
  -d "address[country]"="GB" \
  -d "address[postal_code]"="PL5 2QT" \

Reader software version

BBPOS WisePOS E readers operating in the United Kingdom must use the reader software version 1.5.0.0 or later. Read about BBPOS WisePOS E software updates for details.

Similarly, BBPOS WisePad 3 readers must use the reader software version 4.01.00.54_Prod_EU_W1_off_v23_510001 or later. Read about BBPOS WisePad 3 software updates for details.

Strong Customer Authentication

Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is a European regulatory requirement to reduce fraud and make payments more secure. SCA is or will be required for customer-initiated electronic payments within the European Economic Area (EEA). For more information about this European regulation, you can read Stripe’s PSD2: SCA guide.

Transactions below 50 euros (or the local currency equivalent) are considered low value and may be exempted from SCA. However, banks need to request authentication if the low value exemption has been used five times since the cardholder’s last successful authentication or if the sum of previously exempted payments exceeds 150 euros (or the local currency equivalent).

In the United Kingdom, contact transactions authenticated with a PIN satisfy the SCA requirements. The chip represents the first authentication element of the transaction (possession) and the PIN represents the second (knowledge). Contactless card transactions, however, may require initiating an authenticated Chip and PIN contact transaction to comply with the SCA requirements.

When using Terminal hardware, the reader prompts the customer to insert their card for a chip-and-PIN transaction. You see two charges associated with these transactions if the customer re-enters their card. The first is a soft-declined charge with an offline_pin_required decline message and contactless_emv read method. The second is the authorised or hard-declined charge with contact_emv read method.

When using Tap to Pay, the device prompts the customer to enter their PIN if contactless PIN validation is supported. If contactless PIN is supported, you see two charges associated with SCA-authenticated transactions. The first is a soft-declined charge with an error message online_or_offline_pin_required. The second is the authorised or hard-declined charge. If contactless PIN is not supported, the payment will be hard-declined before the PIN screen appears, with the reason online_or_offline_pin_required or offline_pin_required. If the card is hard-declined we recommend asking the customer to try a different card or collecting payment in a different way. For example, by sending a Payment Link.