Issuer Response Timeouts

Welcome to the second article in the series, which concentrates on problems with issuer host responses.

Background and mechanics

Within Visa the name of the service which manages the handling of response times is called Assured Transaction Response (ATR). The idea of ATR is to assure that the cardholder gets a response when transacting, whether it's face to face, or online.

Visa has time limits set in the system. When an issuer host fails to respond within the ATR window, Visa's Stand-In Processing (STIP) steps in to provide an authorization decision on behalf of the issuer.

What happens during a timeout

When a transaction times out, VisaNet's STIP system evaluates the transaction based on issuer-configured parameters and either approves or declines the transaction. This is called a STIP stand-in decision. The issuer later receives an advice message informing them of the STIP decision.

Different scenarios causing timeouts

Timeouts can occur due to issuer host outages, network issues between the issuer and VisaNet, slow processing on the issuer side, or configuration issues. Understanding which scenario is occurring is crucial to resolving timeout problems.

For expert analysis of your timeout patterns and STIP configuration, contact Payment Authorization Expertise.