6.6 Release Management and Change Control

After you go live, your organisation will need to provide resources to handle issues, manage system changes and enhancements, and add new features and services to your card programme.

6.6.1 System Changes

Thredd provides Pre-Release Notifications (PRNs) to inform you of any system changes that may affect your service. Notifications are sent to affected customers 4 weeks in advance.

Depending on the type of change, we may not notify you via the PRN process (e.g., where you do not need to change your systems). 

6.6.2 Regulatory and Scheme Changes

Thredd will implement mandatory financial services regulations and card scheme mandates.

Regulatory changes affecting financial services and payments are region and country specific. For example, the European Union issues directives which all financial firms operating in the European Union must follow, such as the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2). Countries may enact specific local regulations relating to payment processing. Thredd will endeavour to update our systems where required to comply with these regulations and provide you with advance warning.

If you know of any upcoming local regulation in your region that may require a change to card transaction processing for your programme, then you should contact Thredd as soon as possible to discuss your requirements.

Visa and Mastercard operate a 6-month Business Enhancement Release process (with major releases in April and October1 There are four releases in total annually: two major plus two additional minor releases.). Changes are communicated to Thredd and issuers via Visa Articles and Mastercard Announcement Notifications (ANs) —also called Mastercard Bulletins and Release Announcements.

We will notify you of these changes, where they affect our systems, via our PRN process. Some changes require that you also update your systems and processes.

6.6.3 Adding New Features

Thredd adopts an agile development process, with four builds and one planned release per month. These changes include regular patches, fixes and enhancements to our systems, software and infrastructure.

Where a change impacts on your service or requires you to update your systems, we will notify you of these changes via our PRN process.