Cardinal Migration Overview

Benefits related to this migration remain unchanged: 

• Improved security, performance, and resiliency by maximizing Visa’s global scale and infrastructure 
• Additional product features, such as updated reporting capabilities and self-service credential management (generation, rotation, expiration) 
• Future product features and enhancements that will be made available through the new and enhanced connectivity 

• All Cruise Hybrid integrations with Songbird will require quarterly integrity hash updates that must be made after migrating. For information on this process please contact your Client Manager or Support. 
• Cruise Standard will not be supported within the Visa Acceptance Platform as of December 31, 2025. All merchants using Cruise Standard must update their integration to Cruise API as part of migration. 

General Steps for the Migration Process 

1. Define a rollback strategy with Cardinal teams should something not go as planned.
2. Recommendation: Define the new transaction endpoint as “second” or as an additional 3DS provider in configurations to facilitate roll back to legacy endpoints and configuration.
3. Implementation will create a ticket with Production Engineering to have the existing Caridnal keys mapped to KMS/Visa keys.
4. Clients should make the transaction endpoint change throughout appropriate applications.
5. Confirm successful processing of all supported card types in Staging/CAS.
6. Where step 3. is successful, confirm the Production transaction endpoint change date/time in collaboration with the Cardinal team.
7. Repeat the above steps for Production environment.
8. Upon successful Production enablement, Monitoring (Kibana dashboard, Service closure in Dynamics) will be facilitated by the Cardinal team including notifying Support of the customer’s traffic cutover.
9. Remember: there are no changes to portal login or reporting experience; still use Cardinal Merchant portal to research and monitor transactions.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 

General Questions 

• As a part of Cardinal's ongoing commitment to provide our clients with the highest level of service and availability, Cardinal is migrating our application stack into the Visa Global Data Centers. The migration will provide additional global scale and resiliency and allow Cardinal to modernize our payment solutions through additional security and product features - for our clients both now and in the future. 

• All clients are asked to begin migration now. By June 30, 2025, the goal is to have all clients’ authentication traffic moved to the Visa Acceptance Platform. 

• There are 3 – 4 primary steps depending on how you’ve integrated with Cardinal.  

1. Phase 1: Migration to API Key Usage. If not already done, see documentation for instruction. 
2. Phase 2 Option A: Update your integration to Cruise API   
3. Phase 3: Plan for rotating Cardinal API keys within 15 months of migration to Visa Acceptance Platform.  
4. Phase 4: Set a final date to cutover all traffic to Visa Acceptance Platform. 

• We will not be supporting custom implementations as part of migration. The recommended URLs should be used with the goal of avoiding any non-standard implementations for better supportability. 

• Please speak with your Client Success or Account Manager. Or call +1.877.352.8444 or email support@cardinalcommerce.com 

Technical Questions  

• An upgrade is required. For updating your credentials to the API key signature reach out to your CSM or find instructions here Updating to Signature. 

• Run 3 transactions for each card brand: AMEX, CB, Discover, Eftpos, Elo, ITMX, JCB, mada, MasterCard, UnionPay, Visa 

• Cardinal will be monitoring all test transactions and will provide reports. 

• No. All performance or load testing must be coordinated with the Cardinal team on clear definitions of load, duration, and date. 

• Cardinal recommends that the migrator create a new Cardinal setup (provider) with route intelligence for the new endpoint URL so that if an issue occurs the traffic can be switched back to the Cardinal setup with the legacy integration.  

• Yes, you can promote your endpoint to Production. Prior to moving to Production, please contact Cardinal to coordinate and to ensure all Production preparation are done. We will monitor your production transactions as well ensuring success.  

• Since we will be part of Visa Data Center, Visa has stringent standards to ensure we are elastic and can handle peak seasons or unexpected volume increases with no degradation is service level. This includes monitoring/alerting to proactively identify any health issues. Load testing will not be available in the short term. 

• Transaction reports can be viewed in the migrator's Merchant Portal.  

• If the key mapping jMeter in SSO has not been completed successfully and the customer attempts to connect to Visa/CGK endpoints, they will see the following error response from Cardinal: