Developer's Guide

Submitting Purchasing Card Level 2 and 3 Transactions
About American Express Purchasing Card Transactions
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164 07 January 2014 Gateway Developer Guide and Reference
Level 2 and Level 3 data is generally considered non-financial data. Lack of adequate data
may cause a transaction to be downgraded.
PayPal generally requires up to Level 2 information in an authorization transaction followed
by additional Level 3 data in the associated delayed capture transaction. A sale transaction
should include all Level 3 data since it is authorized and later settled.
Accepted BIN Ranges
Visa, MasterCard, and American Express publish specific Bank Identification Number (BIN)
ranges for purchasing cards. Sometimes the processor determines whether a card is a
purchasing card, for example, TSYS Acquiring Solutions. In other cases, the Gateway makes
the determination based on the BIN range (for example, FDMS South and American Express).
About American Express Purchasing Card Transactions
The information in this section applies to transactions processed by American Express not
necessarily to all American Express cards. Level 2 and Level 3 purchasing card rules may
differ for American Express card transactions processed by other processors such as
Paymentech or First Data Nashville.
Supported Transaction Types
You can submit Level 3 parameters with delayed capture, sale, credit, or force transactions.
Level 3 data in authorization transactions is ignored. The Gateway decides whether a
transaction meets Level 3 requirements during authorization.
Level 3 data is passed to the American Express processor only during settlement.
Level Description
Level 1 Function as normal credit cards and are authorized and associated with normal
transaction data in authorization and settlement. Any merchant who accepts credit
cards supports this level..
Level 2 Additional data regarding sales tax, customer code, purchase order number, invoice
number are captured at the point of sale. In most cases, this information is combined
with the merchant's tax ID number, state, and postal code data and is then passed
through during settlement. For some processors and banks, however, a Level 2
authorization may include some of this data.
Level 3 Significant additional information such as line items, product codes, item
descriptions, unit price, unit quantities, and ship-to postal data are added to the Level
2 data to provide optimal reporting to buyers and sellers. Settlement transactions
typically carry Level 3 data.