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Enable 3DS2 for PayPal Payflow gateway integration

Zuora

Enable 3DS2 for PayPal Payflow gateway integration

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3D Secure 2.0 (3DS2) is a widely recommended solution for strong customer authentication (SCA) under PSD2. The PayPal Payflow gateway integration provides support for 3DS2 through the embedded iFrame of Payment Pages 2.0. 

To comply with PSD2 using 3DS2, the following updates are required:

  1. Enable 3DS2 for your PayPal Payflow merchant account.
  2. Configure the gateway instance.
  3. Configure 3DS2 settings in Payment Pages.

Then you can implement and use Payment Pages 2.0 as usual. See Payment Pages 2.0 implementation overview for more information.

With 3DS2 implemented and enabled, when end customers are challenged while transacting on your Payment Page, they will get held up on the challenge window before passing the validation. The callback page is displayed only when they are authenticated. A payment method ID is also generated and returned. 

If your customers failed the strong customer authentication, the [ThreeDs2_Authentication_Exception] error code and the actual error message are returned. The error code is common across all gateways, while the error message is gateway-specific.

Enable 3DS2 for your PayPal Payflow account 

Before configuring your Zuora tenant, you must enable 3D Secure 2.0 for your PayPal Payflow merchant account. PayPal Payflow integrates with CardinalCommerce's Cardinal Cruise technology to provide support for 3DS2. For more information, see PayPal's Documentation.

Configure the gateway instance

Only the PayPal Payflow version supports 3DS2. If you are using another version of the PayPal gateway integration, create a new PayPal Payflow gateway instance.

Follow Configure the PayPal Payflow payment gateway to learn how to configure PayPal Payflow gateway instances. Note that the following fields are required to enable 3DS2:

  • API Key
  • API Identifier
  • Org Unit ID
  • Processor ID
  • Merchant ID for PSD2
  • Transaction Password

Configure 3DS2 settings in Payment Pages

When setting up a Payment Page, select the Enable 3D Secure 2.0 checkbox and select the created gateway instance from the Default Payment Gateway dropdown list. You can complete other settings as usual.

Zuora recommends you to enable the CAPTCHA challenge feature so that you can limit the number of times end customers can attempt to submit the form after they fail the authentication. CAPTCHA challenge can be used with the 3DS2 feature to prevent potential bot attacks and reinforce the transaction security.

For more information about enabling and configuring CAPTCHA, see Security Measures for Payment Pages 2.0.

The "Best practices" section in Zuora’s implementation of 3D Secure 2.0 provides best practices for reducing the possibility of failed transactions due to 3DS2 authentication errors.