An Acquirer Reference Number (ARN) is a unique transaction identifier assigned by an acquiring bank once a card payment has been initiated. ARNs are visible to both the acquirer and the issuing bank, so they can be used to trace the transaction by everyone in the payment ecosystem throughout the entire transaction lifecycle — authorization, capture, settlement, refund, and chargeback.
At AltoPay, ARNs are most commonly used to confirm whether a refund was processed successfully and resolve payment disputes before they advance to chargebacks. For example, our technology can use ARN data to match prevention alerts to their corresponding transactions.
We include ARN data in all of our reporting, so you can access the information at any time and use it however suits your business best.
For more than a decade, Jessica Velasco has been a thought leader in the payments industry. She aims to provide readers with valuable, easy-to-understand resources.
