Collecting Merchant Consent

What is Merchant Consent?

Fidel API requires consent from every merchant in order to spot transactions from their payment terminals.

•  Before you add Brands and Locations to your dashboard, you must have already received consent from the brands to track transactions at their locations. 
• Not having proper consent in place is a direct breach of contract with the card schemes who will conduct routine checks to ensure compliance.

How can I collect Merchant Consent?

There are two ways that brands are approved. 

• For an external brand, you may request Brand consent either in writing at the time of agreement with a new merchant partner, or when onboarding a new Brand, either in the dashboard or via our API. 
• For self-funded Brands, you will still need to collect merchant consent, however this can be built into your commercial agreements with participating merchants. When consent has been collected in contracts outside of the Fidel Dashboard, you can auto-approve the Brand.

Requesting Brand Consent via the Dashboard

On the dashboard, enter the name and email of the Brand Contact and Fidel will send an email inviting them to create a Brand account at clo.fidel.uk. 

Requesting Brand Consent via the API

To request Brand Consent with the API, use the Brand Consent Endpoint. 

• After creating an account, the Brand User provides consent and will have access to transactions made by cardholders at participating locations. 
• If you're funding your own offers, or you've received direct authorization from a Brand, you can auto-approve the brand's consent using the Create Brand User endpoint in the Brand Consent API, and adding skipInvite: true to the JSON request with the brand owner information. 
• You can learn more about adding a Brand via the API here.

What does this look like for the merchant?

Once you have entered the merchant’s contact information for consent on the Dashboard or via the API, an automated email is sent to the merchant for them to accept the terms and conditions. 

The content of this automated email is below:

• Upon clicking the unique link, they will be taken to an account creation page to create a password and accept the terms and conditions. 

When this is completed, the merchant will have access to a limited view of the Fidel Dashboard and the Brand will show as Approved on your Dashboard. You will now be able to proceed onboarding Locations associated with the Brand.