Account Funding Transactions

Account Funding Transactions (AFT) are a type of transaction where money is being transferred to fund another account, rather than directly purchasing goods and services.

These are often used by merchants offering specialized financial services, including

• Money transfer services
• Prepaid card services
• "Stored value" wallet platforms
• Funding of bank or brokerage accounts

AFTs are a "pull" transaction-- they transfer money from the customer to the merchant. They should not be confused with Original Credit Transactions (OCTs) which "push" funds from the merchant to a customer.

Platform Support

Account Funding Transactions are currently supported on the Tsys platform, and only for Visa and Mastercard card types. Only specific Merchant Category Codes are eligible to issue AFTs:

Sending an AFT

Account Funding Transactions can be sent through the Payment API. They follow the same basic syntax as a regular sale or authorization-only transaction, but add two new fields:

aft_identifier - specifies the Business Application Identifier (Visa) or Transaction Type Identifier (Mastercard) code for the transaction. This tells the network what type of AFT is being performed

aft_recipient_name - the first and last name of the recipient. Required for Mastercard only.

Example Request

curl --request POST \
     --url https://sandbox.nmi.com/api/v5/payments/sale \
     --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     --header 'Authorization: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX' \
     --data '{
       "amount": 23.50,
       "aft_identifier": "F07",
       "aft_recipient_name": "Fred Smith",
       "payment_details": {
         "card_number": "5555555555554444",
         "card_exp": "1229"
       },
       "billing_address": {
         "first_name": "John",
         "last_name": "Doe",
         "address1": "123 Main Street",
         "address2": "Apt E",
         "city": "Wichita",
         "state": "KS",
         "zip": "12345",
         "country": "US",
         "phone": "8005551212",
         "email": "[email protected]"
       }
     }'

aft_identifier Values

API Response Values

When an account funding transaction is performed, three new fields are available to include in the API or reporting output:

is_aft: a true/false value indicating if the transaction was relayed as an AFT

aft_identifier: returning the aft_identifier value you provided during the request

aft_recipient_name: returning the aft_recipient_name value you provided during the request