Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
This section provides answers to questions about the Documentation Portal website and the available technical documentation.
Core Platform
The Thredd Platform is a highly-scalable, configurable, reliable and secure global payments processing platform used by fintechs, digital banks and e-wallets. Thredd receives and processes authorisation and financial messages from the card schemes. For more information, see Thredd Platform.
The External Host Interface (EHI) offers a way to exchange transactional data between Thredd and a Program Manager’s externally hosted systems. All transaction data processed by Thredd is transferred to the external host system via EHI in real time. For more information, see EHI.
Thredd has considerable experience and expertise in seamlessly migrating programmes from other issuer processors. For more information about upgrading to the most comprehensive, robust and reliable solution for card payment processing, see Issuer Migration.
Card Management and Configuration
You can configure and control your payment programmes in real-time using Smart Client to view and manage the full lifecycle of your customers’ transactions and card usage. For more information, see Smart Client Guide.
Thredd Web Services provide a flexible way to interface to Thredd to create and manage the cards in your program. Card enrolment in services such as 3D Secures and tokenisation are also managed using web services. You can use web services to adapt cards to the changing needs of your service, including enhancing the safety and security of cards and reducing the risk of fraud. For more information, see Web Services.
Using the Thredd RESTful API, you can issue cards and manage the cards in your programme. You can test and develop against the API, create both physical and virtual cards, view and manage the card balance, and enrol your cards in 3D Secure. For more information, see the Cards API Website.
The Thredd system provides flexible options for setting up and applying card usage and administration fees to the cards in your program. For more information, see the Fees module.
You can create digital tokens which can be used for payments on smartphones and other tokenised devices and at merchant online stores. For more information, see Tokenisation.
Payment Dispute Management
You can view chargeback transactions for both Visa and Mastercard on Smart Client and drill down to view details of any linked card transactions. For Mastercard transactions, you can also raise chargeback requests and manage the lifecycle of charged-back transactions. For more information, see the Smart Client Guide.
In addition to chargebacks, Thredd supports the payments dispute management process, including Case Filing to raise any pre-arbitration or arbitration requests to Mastercard. For more information, see the Payments Dispute Management Guide.
Security, Fraud Protection and Compliance
You can use 3D Secure to secure online credit and debit card transactions in your card payment programmes. For more information about 3DS, see the 3D-Secure Guide. You can also use Thredd Protect in your card payment programmes to help protect your institution and your cardholders from fraudulent activity or money laundering. For more information about Thredd Protect, see Thredd Protect.
You can use the Thredd Mastercard fraud reporting facility to report fraud to Mastercard using the Fraud and Loss Database reporting service (previously known as SAFE). For more information, see the Payments Dispute Management Guide.
Thredd plays an essential role in helping our Program Managers understand the regulatory environment. We implement any changes needed to keep the Thredd systems up-to-date and compliant with the latest regulatory changes, such as the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) and Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard.
Testing and Integration
Using the Thredd Card Transaction System (CTS), you can test the integration of your card processing systems and validate the setup of your External Host Interface (EHI) before moving into a production environment. A simple dashboard provides built-in standard test cases and a transaction history screen. For more information, see CTS.
Reporting and Reconciliation
Thredd provides extensive reporting and reconciliation options to provide detailed information about your payment programmes in real-time, or as daily and quarterly reports. For more information, see Reporting and Reconciliation.
Thredd can provide a reconciliation service, powered by Kani, to reconcile complex and contrasting data sets in minutes, saving time, cost and resource in the process. For more information about using Kani in your deployment, contact your Account Manager.
Thredd Documentation
The Documentation Portal is intended to provide you with access to the latest Thredd technical documentation. We would really appreciate your feedback on this website! Are there any additional documents you'd like to see or features you'd like us to include in our documents? What works well for you and where do you think we should improve? Please send any comments to: docs@thredd.com
We provide a separate website to host our REST-based cards API documentation and API Explorer. For more information, see the Cards API Website.
This site is intended to showcase our latest customer-facing guides. It will be updated with new guides, as they become available. There are some guides which we do not make available on this site. For details, please contact your Implementation Manager or Account Manager.
You can use the Search option at the top right of this page to search for specific content. If you can't find what you are searching for on the main website, try searching within a specific guide; each guide has its own local search.
In 2022 we focused on updating and releasing our main technical guides, and upgrading our guides to fully searchable online versions. In 2023 we will be adding new content and interactive features, such as training videos and demos. For a more detailed roadmap, contact docs@thredd.com.
Cloud Upgrade (for existing customers)
There is no additional cost associated to upgrading to Thredd Cloud.
No, you will not need to perform a migration. You will just need to connect to our high availability zone. The first step is completing the form we provided in the email. There is likely to be testing needed from your side to make sure the connection is up and running.
Initially there will be no impact on your current Web Services integration, everything will remain the same. However when we switch over to Web Services in the Cloud, we will provide you with new URLs and IPs. This switch over will be communicated to you well before the switch over happens.
Your current payment plan will remain the same.
Our approach is to transition Thredd services to the Cloud through a proven process, whilst still holding the data within our current on-premise database. This enables a smooth transition for our customers, proves all the services before moving the data and removes the dependency on the Card Schemes.
Key points to note:
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An additional connection (VPN, SFTP) will be required to our Cloud environment which will be an alternative to the current Disaster Recovery (DR) connection
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This will be seamless to you once the new connection is in place.
No development required by existing customers to upgrade to Thredd Cloud.
This isn’t optional, we are upgrading our processing to Cloud. We are requesting that all existing customers establish connectivity to our cloud instance over the next couple of months to facilitate the closure of our secondary site in favour of our high availability zone within Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The timeline to complete the connection to Thredd Cloud is June 2023. Your existing connection with us will not be impacted and it will continue to connect to our On-Premise data centre. By completing this form, we will build a new VPN connection to you from our Thredd Cloud high availability zone (DR site).
If you have more than one connection, then please submit two forms,
For example, if you have a VPN connection from your on-premise infrastructure for SmartClient and sFTP connectivity, and another VPN from your AWS cloud deployment to access Web Services and EHI, then add details in the form notes:
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Put VPN connection from on-premise infrastructure for SmartClient and sFTP connectivity
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Put VPN from AWS cloud deployment to access Thredd Web Services and EHI
If you do not use the within Amazon Web Services (AWS) Transit Gateway and have no capacity on short notice to execute this transition, then please contact us to discuss.
Our preference is that you route traffic through to us via Transit Gateway. We are happy to discuss and support you on this. We can also provide additional documentation to support you.
Yes, both are included. Initially the new connection will be set up to replace our Disaster Recovery (DR) site only. After all services have been transferred to the cloud, the connection will then become a single access point.
We are busy setting up our production environment in our Cloud environment and once it has been fully tested and vetted, we will switch the connection over from our On-Premise connection to the new Cloud connection. This will be communicated to you before the switch is made. Once we switch over, the Disaster Recovery (DR) connection will become your primary connection to Thredd. We are hoping to have everything set up and tested by the end of Q3 2023.
Our UAT is the only testing environment we have and it is already in the Cloud. The connection will replace the current Disaster Recovery (DR) connection and we can perform limited testing once your connection to the Cloud is set up.
Documentation is being worked on and will follow once ready. If you have any questions, please contact Thredd Operations via Jira quoting ‘Higher Availability Zone’.
Yes, please follow the below link for more details regarding the within Amazon Web Services (AWS) Transit Gateway:
For the PRD0 system, values are from 1 to 1,999,999,999,999,999.
For the PRD1 system, values are from 2,000,000,000,000,001 to 2,999,999,999,999,999 (or, a 16-digit transaction ID beginning '2').
For the PRD2 system, values are from 3,000,000,000,000,001 to 3,999,999,999,999,999 (or, a 16-digit transaction ID beginning '3').