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Strong Customer Authentication

What is it about?

On the 14th of September 2019, a new law will be put into force that aims to protect users from fraudulent payments. This is a general overview. Full details can be found here.

What changes for the players?

Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requires companies to introduce additional authentication steps into their payment process. Generally, it means we will ask you to authenticate more often when making a payment.

There are three elements of authentication out of which two must be used:

  • Authentication by what you know (e.g., password, pin, or security question)
  • Authentication by what you have (e.g., phone, hardware token, or one-time password)
  • Authentication by who you are (e.g., fingerprint, face recognition, or number on ID/passport)

When do players need to authenticate?

In general, every transaction done via credit card or bank card will be affected by this change. This means that every payment you make with those payment methods will have to be authenticated by two out of the three abovementioned options. However, there are exceptions:

Your bank will decide whether the SCA process is necessary for each transaction. As this is a completely new feature there are no thresholds known, so we cannot reliably say, what amount will trigger the authentication.

Is there a way to avoid this?

Depending on your bank, you may have the possibility to whitelist certain receivers of payments, e.g., the Wargaming Premium Shop. This will most likely not be available from the beginning, as your bank needs to introduce this feature technically. Once you have set this up, your bank should not ask for the SCA. This is called an exemption.

Another exemption can be automatically requested by us. If we have no suspicion of fraudulent payment, our system can ask your bank to exempt a transaction from the authentication process. It is however still the bank deciding if this payment needs to be verified by the SCA. This is not a whitelist and the Player Support team has no influence on those exemptions.

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