Velocity Checking is a security feature peformed by the terminal and card. The checks ensures that a large payment is not splitted into smaller ones within a short period and during offline scenarios to circumvent the financial limits of the cardholder and merchant.
Severy counters may be configured on the card that can be used for Velocity Checking.
The purpose of velocity checking is to allow an issuer to request that, after a certain number of consecutive offline transactions (the Lower Consecutive Offline Limit), transactions should be completed online. However, if the terminal is incapable of going online, transactions may still be completed offline.
If the terminal is incapable of going online, transactions may still be completed offline until a second (Upper Consecutive Offline Limit) limit is reached. After the upper limit is reached, the recommendation of the issuer might be to reject any transaction that cannot be completed online.
Once a transaction has been completed online with successful issuer authentication, the count begins anew, so that transactions may be processed offline until the lower limit is again reached.
Similar to the counters above, the values LCOLA and UCOLA can track a lower and upper amount in the card's currency. These limits only work in case of transactions performed in the cards home currency.
These limits are specific to VISA® cards and quick contactless transactions (VISA Low Value Payment, qVSDC). The Available Funds amount is reduced by every contactless offline transaction. As soon as an online transaction is processed, the Available Funds are "refilled" to the VLP Funds Limit value. Therefore this value indices how much you can spend with offline contactless payments.
As soon as VLP Available Funds falls below the VLP Reset Threshold then the card tries to request an online processing. The VLP Single Transaction Limit sets the maximum amount for a single offline contactless transaction.
VISA cards may contain several additional counters for domestic and international transactions. A comprehensive overview:
CTC: Consecutive Transaction Counter - incremented for each offline transaction
CTCUL: Consecutive Transaction Counter Upper Limit - maximum number of consecutive offline transactions that can be conducted before a transaction will be declined offline if it cannot be sent online
CTCI: Consecutive Transaction Counter International - incremented for each offline transaction in a foreign currency (not card currency)
CTCIC: Consecutive Transaction Counter International Country - incremented for each offline transaction in a foreign country (not card country)
CTIUL: Consecutive Transaction International Upper Limit - maximum number of offline international transactions for CTCI and CTCIC
For contactless payments:
CLTC: Contactless Transaction Counter - incremented for each offline contactless domestic transaction
CLTCUL: Contactless Transaction Counter Upper Limit - maximum number of offline contactless domestic transactions allowed before online processing is requested
And the total sum of transactions can also be limited:
CTTA: Cumulative Total Transaction Amount - total accumulated amount for offline approved transactions
CTTAUL: Cumulative Total Transaction Amount Upper Limit - maximum total accumulated amount of offline approved transaction. If exceeded, an offline payment is rejected.
A further VISA® specific counter of the total remaining amount available to be spent offline. This may be calculated from the CTTAL - CTTA and/or VLP Available Funds.
This is used by MasterCard® and represents the amount of offline spending available on the card.
The EMV Common Payment Application describes the payment scheme for some European debit card, e.g. the German Girocard. The application contains a very complex logic of counters, accumulators and cyclic accumulators. You may have a look at Accumulator #2 which tracks the amount of all offline/contactless transactions.
As most transactions are performed online nowadays, cards rarely contain any useful counters. For daily or weekly limits, please contact your bank.