In order to improve security of online payments Filemail incorporates 3D Secure 2.0 in the payments flow. 3D Secure (3-domain structure), also known as a payer authentication, is a security protocol that helps to prevent fraud in online credit and debit card transactions. This additional security was initiated and created by Visa and MasterCard and it’s branded as ‘Verified by Visa’ and ‘MasterCard SecureCode’ respectively.
While processing your credit card data Filemail will now ask your card issuer to verify the card before it can be used for payments in Filemail. No worries, this is done real-time and behind the scenes. There are 2 possible scenarios:
The bank decides to trust that you are the real cardholder and it is OK to make the purchase - then the transaction goes through the “frictionless” flow and the authentication is completed without any additional input from you.
If the bank decides it needs further proof that you are the real cardholder, the transaction is sent through the “challenge” flow and you will be asked to provide additional input to authenticate the payment. In most cases this means that you will be presented with a popup where you need to enter a code sent to you via SMS (Text). However this might slightly differ depending on the bank and how it implements 3D Secure 2.0 on its end.
Non-payment verifications: sometimes you provide credit card data to Filemail without actually paying at the very moment (e.g. when creating an account with Filemail you get a free trial period first). In this case a "challenge" flow with SMS verification might still apply. The challenge will indicate paying specific amount to Filemail, but we will not charge your card right away. Instead we only validate the card for the given amount - so that we can make sure the bank trusts you are the real cardholder. This ensures the security of future payments with this card (after trial period ends).