Payment policies for strong customer authentication (PSD2, SCA)

If you are a Zendesk customer inside the European Union (EU), or you have a payment card issued from an EU bank, you may be required to complete strong customer authentication (SCA) when you purchase from Zendesk. This includes buying Zendesk product subscriptions, buying Zendesk apps, updating a credit card, or renewing on-going paid subscriptions.

This article includes the following sections:

What is strong customer authentication (SCA)?

How do I know if SCA is required?

How do I complete the SCA processing?

What is strong customer authentication (SCA)?

The Revised Directive on Payment Services (PSD2) is a legislative directive enacted by the European Union (EU) that regulates payment services and payment service providers in the European Economic Area. This directive includes a strong customer authentication (SCA) requirement. To increase the security of electronic payments, the SCA requirement ensures that electronic payments are performed with multi-factor authentication. This requirement impacts merchants, such as Zendesk, who transact with customers. Learn more about Strong Customer Authentication.

How do I know if SCA is required?

At this time, the SCA prompts are limited to EU customers who transact with Zendesk for USD payments using credit or debit cards issued by EU banks, but Zendesk does not have visibility on which transactions will require authentication ahead of time.

If your bank requires a purchase to be authenticated as part of the payment process, you may see a prompt from your bank asking you to complete SCA authentication before payment is taken. See example below.

This is just an example. The SCA prompt varies, depending on your bank or application.

How do I complete the SCA processing?

To complete the processing, follow the authentication instructions that appear on screen. If you have SCA authentication issues when processing a payment to Zendesk, contact Zendesk Customer Support. You can try another card, but this may also trigger SCA authentication. For more information on credit card payment failure, see Resolving issues when your credit card fails.