Account Updater Models

Written by

James Davis

Written by James Davis

Senior Technical Writer at United Thinkers

Author of the Paylosophy blog, a veteran writer, and a stock analyst with extensive knowledge and experience in the financial services industry that allows me to cover the latest payment industry news, developments, and insights. Read more

Reviewed by

Kathrine Pensatori

Reviewed by Kathrine Pensatori

Product Specialist at United Thinkers

Product specialist with more than 10 years of experience in the Payment Processing Industry. I help payment facilitators and PSPs solve their various payment processing issues. Read more

Different payment card associations use different account updater models. This fact should be kept in mind by recurring billing companies (especially, by companies, dealing with systems, which follow different account updater models).

Integrated model

Many payment gateways follow the so-called integrated model. Under this model a merchant sends transactions to be processed by a payment gateway, as usual. If an update for some account is available (from the issuer), the payment gateway adds updated account information to the response to the respective transaction before sending it back to the merchant.

Subscription-based model

American Express follows the so-called subscription-based model. Under this model a merchant can get updated account information on a regular basis. Once some update becomes available, a merchant gets a respective notification.

File-based model

Visa and MasterCard follow the so-called file-based model. Under this model a merchant sends a file with account numbers and gets back a file, containing updates for those accounts, for which they are available.

To learn more about account updater models, read the respective article on Paylosophy.