Recurly is continually reviewing and updating our payment gateways to ensure excellent transaction processing across each of our gateways. This means staying up-to-date on new gateway features to ensure Recurly supports the functionality most useful for our merchants’ businesses.

Recurly has added support for level II card data when processing Adyen transactions. This new service complements our existing gateways supporting Level II data: Braintree, Chase Orbital, Merchant eSolutions, TSYS, and Vantiv. This additional support should result in substantial savings when processing qualified Level II Adyen transactions. 

What is Level II Card Data?

Each transaction that is processed can include varying levels of data, which will affect the interchange rate charged by the credit card networks. The amount of data included is categorized into a series of “levels”, which begins at a basic Level I and goes all the way up to Level III. In general, merchants should see savings in credit card processing as they qualify for greater card data levels. For example, including Level II data can represent a savings of between 0.05-0.50% compared to transactions submitted with Level I data whereas level III data can result in a 0.25-2.5% savings from a Level II transaction. 

The savings are the direct result of including more information when submitting a transaction. 

Let’s break down the information needed for each level:

Level I

Level I transactions is the most basic level of transaction processing. This is the level at which most consumer transaction processing occurs and should include the following, at a minimum:

  • Transaction amount

  • Transaction date

  • Merchant category code (MCC)

  • Merchant name

Level II

Level II transactions include all level I data, plus the following additional fields. 

  • Sales tax amount

  • Customer code / PO number

  • Merchant zip code

Transactions that can qualify for Level II rates would be commercial and government transactions. General consumer transactions are processed at a Level I rate and would not benefit from Level II data. 

Level III

Lastly, Level III transactions include all information from the previous levels, plus a variety of more granular data fields that describe a transaction in detail. This is used primarily for commercial and government transactions where detailed transaction information is often required. 

Based on the above, Level II card data  provides the best “value” in terms of overall savings in comparison to the overall level of detail needed for a transaction.

Who Benefits from Level II Card Data?

In general, those who will benefit from including level II card data in their transaction requests, will be those who process a high proportion of corporate (B2B) and government (B2G) transactions. Since all consumer (B2C) transactions are processed at Level I rates, it may make the most sense for merchants focused on corporate and government customers to go through the efforts to support Level II data on their transactions as these merchants would likely see the greatest benefit.  

Steps to Take to Benefit from Level II Card Data

The only setup needed to start qualifying for level two rates, if eligible, would be enabling tax support through Recurly.  

Wrap Up

Recurly now offers the ability to process transactions that can qualify for Level II interchange rates across 6 gateways, with Adyen being the newest. See our documentation to learn more. 

As always, Recurly is continuing to monitor each of our gateway integrations to ensure continued transaction processing excellence. Stay tuned for what’s next!