This page explains the 'Merchant Reference Format' field, which is only applicable to New Zealand banks and merchants.
Note: If you are an Australian merchant, you do not need this field.
New Zealand merchants may choose to provide payee details that will assist in bank account reconciliation. The payee particulars, payee code and payee reference details may then be provided in the merchant reference. Those details will then be inserted into the corresponding payee fields on the merchant’s bank statement. If the payee details are provided, they must be passed in the MerchantReference field in the following format:
<payee particulars> | <payee code> | <payee reference> | <other merchant reference>
The first three fields must be provided and if this is not the case then the existing process will be assumed, resulting in NO population on the merchants bank statement. Where no value is available the merchant is to provide that placeholder with nothing in it.
If a field contains more than the allowed number of characters it will be truncated. The allowable number of characters for New Zealand is 12 characters per field, inclusive of spaces.
The MerchantReferenceFormat field is passed in the Initiate Transaction Request to allow the merchant to select the reconciliation formatting option (1 through 4).
| MERCHANT REFERENCE FORMAT | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| 1 | Free format i.e. a one to one mapping of the merchant supplied reconciliation data to the Pay Anyone fields. |
| 2 | The POLi ID to be mapped to the Payee Particulars field and the merchant supplied data (if any) to be mapped to the Payee Code and Payee Reference field. |
| 3 | The POLi ID to be mapped to the Payee Code field and the merchant supplied data (if any) to be mapped to the Payee Particulars and Payee Reference field. |
| 4 | The POLi ID to be mapped to the Payee Reference field and the merchant supplied data (if any) to be mapped to the Payee Particulars and Payee Code. |
If the MerchantReferenceFormat is not passed in the InitiateTransaction request or a value other than 1 to 4, then the payee fields will not be populated using the MerchantReference field data. Any data in the MerchantReference field will then be displayed in the POLi pages as received.