Scheme advice

In some cases, the payment scheme steps in to evaluate a payment after Adyen's initial authorization flow. For example, this can happen when Adyen cannot complete the authorization flow in real time.

After performing its own validations, the scheme determines whether to authorize or refuse the payment, and shares this outcome with Adyen. Adyen then updates the payment with a new status that reflects the scheme's advice.

If the scheme's advice differs from Adyen's initial authorization decision, Adyen always defers to the scheme's advice. The scheme's decision determines the final status of the payment and whether the funds are reserved or released. Any decisions made by Adyen after the scheme's decision can create a new event booking, but will not contain any balance changes, nor affect the final status of the payment.

Get updates

To get real-time updates about the status changes because of the scheme's advice, you can use the following methods:

1. Transfer webhooks

When Adyen updates the status of a payment based on the scheme's advice, you receive an additional balancePlatform.transfer.updated webhook with a new event for the updated booking. You can identify webhooks related to scheme advice by the following fields:

The scheme's decision determines the final status of the payment and whether the funds are reserved or released. When you receive a webhook related to scheme advice, use its status as the final outcome of that payment.

2. Customer Area

In the Customer Area, you can view details about the payments made with your issued cards by navigating to Balances > Transfers. By clicking on a specific payment, you can find the details about its status and past status changes under Transfer lifecycle.

When Adyen receives scheme advice on a payment after the initial authorization flow, we update the payment's status and the reserved balance based on the advice. The new status is set to AdviceAuthorised or AdviceRefused, and is reflected in the Transfer lifecycle. These statuses reflect the scheme's final decision on the payment, and determine the final balance change.

Reconcile payments

To reconcile payments that have been updated based on the scheme's advice, you can use the Balance Platform Account Report (BPAR). This report provides a detailed overview of the payments made with your issued cards.

When Adyen updates a payment based on the scheme's advice, the Balance Platform Accounting Report includes an additional payment event. You can identify such events by the following values:

1. The Description column is populated with the following value: schemeAdvice.
2. The Status column records the final decision on the payment by the scheme: authorised or refused.

Events related to scheme advice are always additive. A payment can have an event with Adyen's original decision, and an additional event based on the scheme's advice. If the values in the Status column for these events differ, then the row with Description set to schemeAdvice determines the final change to the reserved balance.

Here is an example of the BPAR booking when both Adyen and the scheme authorizes a payment:

Here is an example of the BPAR booking when Adyen refuses a payment and the scheme authorizes it: