Visa is introducing new digital commerce initiatives in Canada to help merchants enhance payment security, improve authorization rates, and reduce fraud. These updates expand the use of tokenization and enhanced data sharing, including participation in the Digital Commerce Authentication Program. Beginning in 2026, certain pricing updates will be introduced alongside new capabilities, with opportunities for merchants to benefit from improved transaction performance and incentives when participating.

Visa is providing guidance to support more effective management of recurring and other merchant initiated transactions (MITs) through the use of the Original Transaction ID (OTID). OTID establishes the link between the original cardholder initiated transaction (CIT) and subsequent MITs, enabling issuers to accurately identify individual subscriptions or services and validate customer consent. Visa strongly recommends the consistent use of OTID across both token based and primary account number (PAN) based transactions, as this supports improved authorization outcomes, reduces unnecessary declines and over blocking, and enables smoother subscription lifecycle management.

Visa will sunset the Digital Authentication Framework (DAF) 3 D Secure (3DS) program in September 2026 as it transitions to newer authentication methods such as Visa Payment Passkey, designed to reduce friction while maintaining strong security for e commerce transactions. Merchants currently using DAF 3DS should plan for this sunset, as no new participants will be accepted to the DAF 3DS program. The Visa Token Service (VTS) DAF program will remain in place with no impact to token transactions. As an early step in the transition, DAF test cases became optional for Visa Secure certification starting 30 October 2025, giving merchants more flexibility as they certify their Visa Secure implementations.