May 9, 2023

New features

Introduced the Direct Debit capability on Nium's payments network for UK and EU customers. The capability provides convenience to UK-based and EU-based businesses to fund from their UK and EU bank account respectively into their Nium-issued wallets using Direct Debit. To support this feature, new APIs have been added and the existing APIs have been modified as mentioned below. The transaction type for this payment method in Nium's system is WALLET_CREDIT_MODE_DIRECT_DEBIT. Contact your Nium representative to activate this feature.

Refer to the Direct Debit user guide for more details on this feature.

• addFundingInstrument API — Links the customer’s bank account to their Nium wallet. Additional data elements have been added to receive bank account details in setting up Direct Debit for UK and EU customers.
• confirmFundingInstrument API — Receives the one-time password (OTP) entered by the customer for validation by Nium against the OTP generated by Nium before setting up a Direct Debit mandate. This is a new API.
• getFundingInstrumentDetail API — Provides the details of the account that's linked.
• getFundingInstrumentList API — Provides the list of accounts that are linked.
• fundWallet API — Initiates the payment instruction to pull the funds.

Enhancements

Introduced the new field statementNarrative in the Fund Wallet API to allow you to pass information that you would like to display in the payer's account statement for every debit transaction done via Direct Debit. The information that you can pass has a maximum length of 10 characters for the US and UK and a maximum length of 140 characters for EU.

API breaking changes

Introduced two new fields in both V1 and V2 of beneficiary APIs. These fields are required for making a local payout to a business in South Africa with South African rand (ZAR) currency.

The updated APIs that include the new fields are addBeneficiary, updateBeneficiary, beneficiaryDetail, and beneficiaryList.

• beneficiaryContactName (beneficiary_contact_name in v1) - This field requires the name of the contact person of the business.

• beneficiaryEntityType (beneficiary_entity_type in v1) - This field requires a beneficiary entity type and needs to be one of the following lowercase values:
  [sole_propriatorship, partnership, privately_owned_company, publicly_owned_company, government_owned_company, go, financial_institution]

New features

In the previous year, we implemented restrictions on card issuance to countries that were approved in the Payment Instruction File (PIF) submitted to the card schemes. However, following additional feedback from the schemes, we have updated our approach and now restrict card issuance based on card type: physical or virtual.

With this new approach, you have the flexibility to configure the countries where you want to issue virtual cards (pending approval from the schemes), even if physical card issuance to those countries is not permitted.

For example, VISA has granted approval for virtual card issuance in Vietnam for a client based in Singapore, but physical cards are still prohibited.

Enhancements

In the previous release notes, we announced that ADD_ON type additional cards will no longer be supported from Sep 30th, 2023. With this release, ADD_ON cards will not be renewable via the Card Renewal API.

API breaking changes

Removed the maskedCardNumber field from the response object of Add Card API v2. If needed, you can use Card Details API (v1 or v2) to get the maskedCardNumber field.

The maskedCardNumber field still exists in Add Card API v1.

Deprecation notices

• Add Card API v1 will return an error if the card being created is an 'Add-On’ card after Sep 30th, 2023. Clients must make the change to either switch to Add Card API v2 or ensure that cardIssuanceAction field in Add Card API v1 is passed as 'NEW' to indicate creation of the primary card.
• All existing Add-On cards are going to continue to work.

Refer to the Deprecated APIs page for the complete list.

New features

• Fetch Corporate Constants API

  Fetch Corporate Constants API is now available for you to look up the enum values related to the onboarding of your corporate customers. This API returns acceptable values of various fields that need to be passed via the Onboard Corporate Customer API.

  There are many fields in Onboard Corporate Customer API which are of type enum and some of these fields have values that change often, such as intendedUseOfAccount and IndustrySector. Integrating this API helps you handle these changes without the need of any further development on your end when values are updated.

  Keeping enum values updated is beneficial to customers as it improves the approval rates and reduces the approval turnaround time.

  You need to integrate the Fetch Corporate Constants API and display the output to customers as a dropdown list while they complete your onboarding form. Use this API for all possible fields such as businessType, documentType, annualTurnover, intendedUseOfAccount, etc. For further details, see the Fetch Corporate Constants user guide.

• Regenerate KYC URL API for Onboarding Corporate Customers

  The KYC URL returned in the response of Onboard Corporate Customer has an expiration time; and once expired, the link cannot be used to complete the applicant KYC.

  Use the Regenerate KYC URL API to generate a new KYC URL with a renewed expiration time.

  This API can be used for all regions if applicantDetails.kycMode='E_DOC_VERIFY' and in Singapore for both E_DOC_VERIFY and E_KYC.

API breaking changes

Introducing a new validation on businessRegistrationNumber. The change is applicable to Nium clients in all geographies that are onboarding corporate customers in the US. Going forward, you are expected to send only 9 digit numerals in this field. Any other format will result in a validation error.

The change is effective July 1, 2023.

Deprecation notices

Starting Sep 1, 2023 many of the enum values for the below listed fields will be removed or updated to support a newer version of our risk scoring model. Make use of the new Fetch Corporate Constants API to get the latest values that are supported for these fields.

Going forward integrate this API instead of hardcoding the new enum values for the associated fields.

Once your integration is completed, please reach out to Nium support to get your template configured for the latest risk model.

A few values are deprecated in the following fields of the Onboard Corporate Customer API:

• riskAssessmentInfo.industrySector
• riskAssessmentInfo.annualTurnover
• riskAssessmentInfo.intendedUseOfAccount
• riskAssessmentInfo.totalEmployees

Refer to the Deprecated APIs page for the complete list.