A merchant plug-in (MPI) is a software module designed to facilitate 3D-Secure verifications to help prevent

credit card fraud Credit card fraud is an inclusive term for fraud committed using a payment card, such as a credit card or debit card. The purpose may be to obtain goods or services or to make payment to another account, which is controlled by a criminal. The P ...

. The MPI identifies the account number and queries the servers of the card issuer ( Visa, MasterCard, or JCB International) to determine if it is enrolled in a 3D-Secure program and returns the web site address of the issuer ''access control server'' (ACS) if it is found. Merchants are responsible for using an

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/ TLS MPI at their servers. Each card issuer is required to maintain an ACS used to support cardholder authentication. A customer authenticates to this ACS by providing their

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and

password A password, sometimes called a passcode (for example in Apple devices), is secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user's identity. Traditionally, passwords were expected to be memorized, but the large number of ...

and the ACS

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the result (success or failure). This signature is then passed through the customer's browser and to the MPI. The plug-in verifies the ACS signature and decides if it wishes to proceed with the transaction. Commercial MPI software is available from a number of vendors.

References

Merchant services {{Business-term-stub

See also

References