Visa’s DCAP: A New Incentive for Richer Card-Not-Present Data

Visa has introduced the Digital Commerce Authentication Program (DCAP), a global framework aimed at reducing fraud and lifting authorization rates for card-not-present transactions. The program gives US businesses a financial incentive to pass more detailed transaction context—such as device ID, billing address, IP address, and customer email—to issuers during authentication. Eligible transactions earn a net interchange reduction of five basis points.

While network incentive programs can lower costs, they also add operational complexity. Merchants must determine which transactions qualify, make sure their integration forwards the required fields, and assess whether the program improves overall economics without inadvertently depressing approval rates. Relying on frictionless authentication to share that data can introduce latency and uncertainty, as issuers may interpret the newer signals differently.

To help its users capture the savings, Stripe has integrated DCAP support into its existing authorization optimization tools, with a focus on preserving transaction conversion.

Transaction-Level Decisions Over Static Rules

Before launching support, Stripe collaborated with Visa on readiness testing to settle on an implementation approach. That work highlighted the value of transaction-level intelligence rather than blanket rules.

Stripe’s Authorization Boost determines on a per-transaction basis whether to submit a Data Only 3DS request, which forwards supplemental risk data from the network to the issuer during authorization. Instead of applying fixed criteria, the feature weighs cost savings, conversion impact, and fraud risk for each individual payment to decide when Data Only 3DS is worth applying. Merchants can then realize DCAP benefits while limiting effects on the customer experience and guarding authorization rates.

The results so far show measurable impact: since April 18, participating Stripe businesses have accumulated $18.4 million in annualized network cost savings from DCAP. Making it easier to collect and send the required data also produced an 8x increase in the number of DCAP-eligible transactions. Stripe continues to work with Visa on eligibility criteria to broaden the pool of qualifying payments.

Enabling DCAP in Your Checkout

Merchants already using Authorization Boost and passing the required data fields are automatically opted into the DCAP optimization logic. For those relying on standalone 3DS, participation requires setting flow_preference[type] to data_share on authentication requests and populating the required data fields.

Authorization Boost can be applied more broadly to fine-tune payment performance beyond DCAP eligibility.