When you convert to the CU*BASE online credit card system, it means just that. All payments and authorizations will be hitting the members' accounts in real time.
The exception is when CU*Answers is in stand-in mode while performing end of day/beginning of day processes, or if any communications issues arise. When either of these situations happens, VISA/FIS stands in and uses a daily PBF file to match against when authorizing or declining an authorization.
Otherwise it works like this:
- The member swipes his card at merchant/enters information on the Internet
- The transaction first goes to FIS/VISA warehouse where fraud/block codes/CVV(2), name match, etc., verifications are processed
- If it passes the verifications, the transaction is sent on to CU*BASE to validate against available funds
- If approved, CU*BASE creates a miscellaneous secured funds record on the loan account, and then passes back either the authorization number or the declination
Because of the two-process system (which only takes a matter of seconds to perform), you will have two places you will need to check if a member's request is declined. The first place you will want to check is a report you can run on menu MNMMFD #25 "Certegy Exception Report." You will need to go to your spooled file list and review the contents of the report to see if your member’s declination appears here and the reason for the declination. If you don’t find the information here, that means it was declined by VISA/FIS prior to getting to the CU*BASE system and you will need to go to their VPN site to review their report/screens on why the member was declined.