Use transaction rules

Limited availability
Transaction rules are currently in pilot phase. Some of the processes and documentation may change as the feature evolves. If you are interested in piloting transaction rules or have any feedback, reach out to your Adyen contact.

When you process payouts to third party bank accounts or cards, you can protect your balance platform from risk by evaluating and declining suspicious payout requests. You can use transaction rules to configure a logic that automatically declines a payout that does not meet your business' requirements.

We recommend that you use transaction rules to make decisions based on request data and static conditions: for example, a fixed list of banks that your team must not pay out funds to.

How it works

You create a transaction rule using the POST /transactionRules endpoint in the Configuration API. When creating transaction rules, you determine:

• The criteria that determine when a payout is evaluated with the rule. For example, if the payout occurs in a specific time interval or if it applies to a specific resource in your balance platform. To define the rule criteria, you must consider the following:

  Criterion	Description
  Request type	Defines the type of transfer request to which you want to apply the rule. For payouts to third parties, set this to bankTransfer.
  Rule type	Defines what data the rule must use to analyze the payout and check whether it meets the conditions. The rule either uses only the data of the current payout being analyzed, or uses accumulated data from previous payouts.
  Time interval	Defines the time period in which a payout must meet the rule conditions.
  Entity	Defines the balance platform resource to which the rule applies.

• The conditions that a payout must meet for the rule's outcome to be applied. For example, if it contains certain request data.

• The outcome to apply when the payout is evaluated and meets the conditions of the rule, such as to decline the payout. This is called a hard-block outcome.

After you create a transaction rule, the process works as follows:

1. Your user makes a payout to a third-party bank account or card.

2. If the payout meets the criteria of the transaction rule, Adyen evaluates the payout using the rule.

3. If the payout meets the conditions defined in the transaction rule, Adyen applies the outcome of the rule.

Hierarchy for transaction rules

You can create a rule with one or more conditions, and apply one or more rules to an entity. When you make a payout, Adyen evaluates all of the applicable rules.

When you have multiple conditions and rules, Adyen evaluates the payout based on the following:

• Multiple conditions within one rule: Adyen applies the outcome if the payout meets all conditions within the rule.
• Multiple rules: Adyen evaluates the rules based on a hierarchy of outcome and rule type. Transaction rules with a hard block outcome with a blocklist rule type are evaluated first. If a payout is already declined, the remaining rules are no longer evaluated. A transaction rule is evaluated based on the following hierarchy:
  1. A hard block outcome with a blocklist rule type
  2. A hard-block outcome with a velocity rule type

You can create transaction rules that override other transaction rules in specific circumstances, such as for a specific balance platform resource. For more information, see Override a transaction rule.

Rule types

The rule type defines what data the rule uses to analyze and decide the outcome of a transfer request. Adyen can use the data of the current transfer, or use accumulated data from previous transfers.

The following rule types are available:

• Blocklist: decline a transfer if it meets the specified conditions.
• Velocity: decline a payout if a set amount of accumulated previous payouts have met the specified conditions. Adyen only considers previous payouts within a specified time interval. You can only accumulate payouts at the balance account level.

Time intervals

The time interval defines the period when the rule conditions and outcome apply. The interval also determines when counters are reset if the rule is accumulating data.

The following types of time intervals are available for business accounts:

Entity to which the rule applies

Each transaction rule must be applied to only one resource.

You can apply a transaction rule to any of the following resources:

• A balance account: the rule applies to a balance account.
• An account holder: the rule applies to all balance accounts linked to an account holder.
• A balance platform: the rule applies to all balance accounts and account holders on your balance platform.

If multiple rules apply to an account, Adyen prioritizes the rules according to the hierarchy of transaction rules.

Aggregating total amount or number of transactions

If you choose the velocity rule type, the payout data is always accumulated and aggregated at the balance account level, in the time interval you specified. For example, you can set a maximum total amount for the aggregated total of all payouts linked to a balance account in the past 24 hours. When aggregating amounts, we convert all payout amounts to the default currency of the account holder or balance platform.

Conditions

Conditions define the data that a payout must contain for the outcome to be applied. Transaction rules check whether the payout meets all of the conditions before accepting or declining the payout. We refer to these conditions as rule restrictions.

A rule restrictions consists of the following:

• value: one or more types of payout data that a payout must or must not contain, such as the country code, the merchant category code, or the start time and end time.

• operation: the operation type, which determines how a payout's data must be evaluated against the values specified in the value array. For example:

  • The payout's merchant category code can Match any of the codes you specify in value.
  • The payout's country code Does not match any of the country codes you specify in value.
  • The total amount of the payout Equals, is greater than or equal to, or is less than the total amount you specify in value.

Get updates when a rule is triggered

To get updated about payouts that are declined because they triggered one or more transaction rules:

• Subscribe to the balancePlatform.transfer.updated webhook. The transactionRulesResults object contains the details of all the transactions rules that the payout triggered. The reason field returns declinedByTransactionRule.
• In your Balance Platform Customer Area, go to the Transfers page and click on a declined payout. You can see all the transactions rules that the payout triggered.