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://secure.nmi.com/api/transact.php \
     --header 'accept: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
     --header 'content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
     
     --data aft_identifier=F07 \
     --data 'aft_recipient_name=Fred Smith' \
     --data ccnumber=5555555555554444 \
     --data ccexp=1229 \
		 --data amount=23.50 \
     
     --data first_name=John \
     --data last_name=Doe \
     --data 'address1=123 Main Street' \
     --data 'address2=Apt E' \
     --data city=Wichita \
     --data state=KS \
     --data zip=12345 \
     --data country=US \
     --data phone=8005551212 \
     --data [email protected] \
     
     --data security_key=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

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