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What You Need To Know about Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)
What You Need To Know about Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)

Much like GDPR, we're making sure your Teachery and Stripe account are compliant with European payment regulations.

Jason Zook avatar
Written by Jason Zook
Updated over a week ago

If you have customers of your courses purchasing from outside of the U.S., we're ensuring our Teachery Payment Pages and Recurring Payment Subscriptions are compliant. 

🙅🏻‍♀️🙅🏻‍♂️ If you do NOT use our built-in payment processor Stripe, you can skip this help document completely.

What the heck is SCA? Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is part of a new set of payment regulations governing transactions in the European Economic Area (EEA). Cardholders must complete an additional authentication step for online transactions when both the cardholder and merchant are located within the EEA. The cardholder’s bank determines eligibility (not Teachery or Stripe).

As a Teachery customer, we have done the heavy lifting for you and there is NO ACTION REQUIRED for your Teachery account and payment pages to meet SCA regulations. Yay, you! 

We’ve updated our payment system to support 3D Secure 2.0, and SCA, with a focus on providing a low-friction experience for your customers.

Image credit: Churn Buster

 

What does the authentication step look like? What will your course customers see when they checkout?

Your course customers will fill out your Teachery payment pages just as they do right now. Again, there is no change or action required on your part. 

When course purchases requiring SCA are submitted (people in the EEA), customers will see a 3D Secure 2.0 modal open up. This modal asks the customer to verify their identity through a push notification, a text message, or another method chosen by their bank.

Successfully authenticated payments will clear as expected. Unauthenticated payments will show relevant error messaging to the customer, and also be flagged in your payment processor.

Image credit: Churn Buster

 

What about existing recurring payment subscriptions? Or existing customers who buy another course? Will they need authentication?

Payments that do not require SCA will be processed as they have in the past. Existing recurring payments MAY need authentication on the next payment but in most cases no action will need to be taken. 

👉Again, there is no effort needed on your part, think about this like the text message verification you sometimes need when you login to your Stripe account. It's that simple for your course customers!
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OPTIONAL: Update the 3D Secure settings in your Stripe account and turn on follow-up emails.

To help in the case that a course purchase isn't authenticated correctly, you can turn on a setting in Stripe which will email the SCA authentication link.

To do this, simply do the following:

  • Login to your Stripe.com account

  • Navigate to Settings

  • Scroll down to the "Stripe Apps" section

  • Click Subscriptions and emails (under BILLING)

  • Scroll down to "Manage payments that require 3D Secure"

  • Turn on the two options as shown here (and update the reminder email schedule):

 

Want to learn more about SCA?

For more information about these new regulations, please review Stripe’s SCA video and guide.

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