Technical Requirements
The table below lists some technical responsibilities and capabilities that you must adhere to in order to participate in EPC.
NOTE
Note that some requirements are only applicable when using particular services or add-on services.
| Feature | Requirement | Capabilities and Responsibilities |
|---|---|---|
| Account numbers | During onboarding, corporate clients must provide the list of external CDV-compliant account numbers for accounts held at your sponsor bank, i.e., the actual account numbers that will be used in payment transactions between your bank and industry banks. You must specify which payment schemes (e.g., PayShap) and directions (inbound or outbound payments) each account may be used for. Electrum or your banking partner will configure these account numbers for you. Note: CDV (check digit verification) is a process that verifies that a given bank account number belongs to a specified bank and bank branch. It is a safety check that allows a bank to detect when an account number is incorrect, before the bank initiates a payment transaction that will ultimately fail. | After onboarding is complete, all new transactions submitted by you will be subject to account validation before the transaction can be processed.
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| Message security | Transaction message transmission between you and the EPC processing engine will make use of JSON web tokens (JWTs) to guarantee message layer security. The sending system must generate the JWT to include in the request message using the sending system’s private key, and the receiving system will use a public key to validate the JWT. |
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| Postings | Your sponsor bank may have opted to implement Electrum's postings functionality. In this case, Electrum sends postings to the sponsor bank after successfully completed transactions. These postings tell the bank to credit or debit your merchant account by a specific amount. The default scenario is that one posting is sent for each completed transaction. There is also an option to make use of batch postings, whereby Electrum only sends one batch posting, at the end of the batching period (e.g., end of day), with one net total amount to be credited to or debited from your account. This also simplifies the end-of-day statement that the bank will send to you. | Between you and the sponsor bank, decide whether to make use of single postings or batch postings. |
Additional Requirements for PayShap
If you wish to implement PayShap, then you must meet the following additional requirements.
| Feature | Requirement | Capabilities and Responsibilites |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | The sponsor bank must register a domain, on your behalf, with BankservAfrica. This is an identifier that is specific to your business. All Payshap transactions will be routed using this domain. | Ensure that the sponsor bank has registered a domain on your behalf. |
| Proxy management | All inbound PayShap payments will be proxy-based; that is, a customer will make use of a proxy when making a payment. In order for a customer to make a payment, there needs to be a link between the customer’s proxy and a customer record in the business partner’s system. |
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| Payment authorisation (only applicable to partner-auth scenarios) | You can choose between two methods of receiving your PayShap payment. The partner-auth option means that you will be involved in the actual authorisation of the payment during the clearing leg of the transaction. | Receive a payment authorisation request from Electrum, authorise a payment, and return an authorisation response. |
| Payment notification | The inbound payment clearing will be processed entirely between Electrum and your sponsor bank's processing engines, and the payment will automatically be effected against your merchant account at your sponsor bank. When processing of the payment is completed, Electrum will send a payment notification to your system to inform you of the payment. Note that Electrum will send you a payment notification whenever a payment was attempted against your merchant account, even if the attempt was unsuccessful. | Receive a payment notification from Electrum and determine if a successful or unsuccessful payment attempt was made pertaining to a given customer record. |