Card Brand Mandates
- Joseph Notari
- Elizabeth Cammack (Unlicensed)
As card brand come out with mandates, merchants must work to comply with them. These mandates are to better protect customers and help merchants fight chargebacks. Two of these mandates that largely affect our Affiliates are billing terms and free trials.
Billing Terms- The billing terms must be on all order forms, directly above the 'Place Order’ button. There must be a check box that the customer clicks to agree to keep their card on file. Within the billing terms, there must be links to the T&C’s, privacy policy, refund policy, cancel portal, email, or form (phone number is optional- but not in place of prior links) and info about price and auto renewals. For more information, please open the PowerPoint below.
As Opium is sunsetting, the rules for Opium are slightly different. Any new or re-promoted forms will need to include the new billing terms language. Anything else on Opium (older but active order forms), can keep the current Card on File language. The difference in the billing terms and the CoF language is that the CoF language only is when a customer agrees to keep their card on file with a merchant for future purchases of the same item.
Free Trials- The free trials mandate affects trials that are either free or discounted. Similar to the billing terms, merchants must follow a set of requirements if they are going to offer these types of promotions. These include, adding a section for free trials into the T&C’s, provide an easy online way to customers to cancel, sent email confirmation for phone orders, for AR notices, decline notices and post charge emails. For more information, please open the PowerPoint below.
