Waitlists and payment updates: Smoothbook now supports SCA (Strong Customer Authentication)

August 25, 2019

Welcome to another update on developments at Smoothbook! Among the usual small changes and updates there are two main ones: Smoothbook now (optionally) has waitlists for all services and, importantly, in compliance with upcoming European PSD2 regulation, Smoothbook now supports Secure Customer Authentication (SCA or sometimes called ‘3D authentication’) on all payments through Stripe (stripe.com is our payments processor).

Waitlists

tldr; Waitlists are disabled by default but configurable on an organisational or service level. To enable / disable waitlists on all services select ‘settings’ from the main menu and click on the ‘calendar settings’ icon. Under ‘general settings’ you will see a checkbox (‘enable waitlists for all services’). To toggle waitlists for individual services, select ‘settings’ from the main menu, click on the ‘resources and services’ icon and select ‘edit’ for the service in question.

Smoothbook now supports waitlists for all services, meaning that if a timeslot or event has been fully booked, customers can optionally add themselves to a waitlist. The process is simple: if a slot opens up for the event then everyone on the waitlist will be emailed and the slot is awarded on a first come, first serve basis – whoever arrives and books first receives the place.

You can read the help article on waitlists by clicking here.

Secure Customer Authentication (SCA) for Stripe payments

tldr; You don’t need to do anything. Smoothbook now supports Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) meaning early compliance with European regulations and greater protection against fraud for you and your customers. Your customers may report that they are having to complete a second step to complete their payments – this is by design.

Per upcoming European PSD2 regulation, all online merchants were required to enable Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) for online payments by September 14, 2019. (I say ‘were’ because the British financial authorities realised belatedly that – somewhat predictably – few businesses were prepared for this hard deadline and mayhem was about to ensue. The deadline has now been pushed back by 18 months). For some light reading that will really help with any insomnia issues you might be having you can read up on PSD2 by clicking here.

Strong Customer Authentication means that certain payment cards require two factor authentication (2fa) in order for a payment to be processed. Two factor authentication generally means that the customer submits their card for payment but will then be prompted to confirm their payment from their phone – either by push notification or a code sent by SMS.

You need to do nothing – all of this has been handled by updates from Stripe and changes to the Smoothbook code. If a payment card requires two factor authentication your customer will submit their card and then be presented with a small screen to take them through the confirmation process.

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