Enhanced Scheme Data: Reduce interchange fees in the US with additional payments data

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The current macroeconomic landscape and rising inflation make optimizing costs more important than ever. Failing to optimize costs in a challenging economic scenario could lead to reduced profit margins, financial strain, and potential risks to business growth. Therefore, businesses need to identify cost-saving opportunities and find new ways to save money and drive value.

Data is a powerful tool, serving various purposes to drive business value. One way of using it to improve efficiency, increase profitability, and optimize costs is through Enhanced Scheme Data (ESD). By sending additional data to card schemes about your customers’ purchases along with eligible US transactions, you can unlock value for your business and save money by reducing interchange fees.

With Adyen, you can easily send ESD through one simple integration. We cover the most common types of data: Level 2 and Level 3 data, as well as other industry-specific data from lodging, airline, car rental, and temporary services.

In this article, you’ll discover how ESD can help optimize costs, benefit your customers, and increase financial sustainability regardless of economic state.

Enhanced Scheme Data (ESD) is additional payments data about your customers’ purchases that you can send to Adyen with your payments or capture requests. We send this data to the card scheme with eligible transactions on your behalf so you can qualify for lower interchange fees. The card scheme then sends this data to the shopper’s bank so the shopper can access all the data in their transaction statement.

Sending ESD to qualify for lower interchange fees only applies to US domestic Visa and Mastercard transactions. You can also send ESD to American Express for US domestic transactions for fraud protection and reporting purposes.

ESD consists of data elements, such as tax amount, item description, unit ID, passenger name, flight number, or number of nights at a hotel. The data contains relevant details about your customer's purchase and can differ depending on the industry.

Before we dive into the different ESD types, let's look at how ESD can add value to your business.

During times of uncertainty, maintaining profitability and mitigating risk becomes more important. By optimizing costs and ensuring efficient resource allocation, you can maximize value across your business.

Since you have the relevant data from each purchase, why not make the most of it and turn it into a cost-saving opportunity? You can optimize costs and save up to 1% per transaction by submitting Enhanced Scheme Data to Adyen. You can then use the savings to invest in other opportunities that drive business growth.

At Adyen, we provide visibility on the savings you make with ESD. We calculate your potential savings based on your current transactions. This means you can see your opportunities to optimize costs through ESD before experiencing the results.

There is also a benefit for your customers. ESD provides detailed information about their purchase on their transaction statements that they can use for more accurate reporting. This data helps them quickly spot and recognize the purchase they’re looking for, contributing to a faster and easier expense reporting process. This is especially valuable for customers who buy multiple products in the same purchase.

The most common types of ESD are Level 2 and Level 3 data. At Adyen, we support Level 2 and Level 3 data for US domestic payments with Visa and Mastercard made using purchasing and corporate cards. We also cover other industries such as airline, car rental, lodging, and temporary services.

The data elements differ depending on your industry. For instance, for hotels, the data is about the guest, their room, and arrival dates, while for airlines, it’s about the ticket, the flight, and the traveler.

You can qualify for ESD programs if you belong to one of the following industries/merchant category codes (MCC).

You can qualify for the Level 2 and Level 3 ESD program if you’re not part of one of the above mentioned industries/merchant category codes (MCC).

It's not possible to combine different types of ESD as they're specific to each industry. If you're an airline business, you can only send airline ESD, and if you're a car rental company, you can only send car rental ESD.

Getting started with ESD with Adyen is an easy process. All it takes is a simple integration. You only need to include ESD in the additionalData object in your payment or capture API call, and you can start unlocking value and reducing interchange fees. This helps you save money and improve the experience for your customers.

Are you ready to improve your profitability through ESD? Reach out to your account manager for more information.