Chargent supports multiple payment method types, including credit cards, bank accounts, checks, and cash. Nowadays, most customers prefer to pay with a credit card. This page focuses on considerations when taking credit card payments in Salesforce.
At some point in your payment process planning, you’ll need to determine if you want to accept bank account transactions, credit card transactions, or both. To review the benefits of each, we’ve put together some information that may help you decide. See ACH Payments Versus Credit Cards.
Billing Address Requirements #
Credit card payments require a billing address to validate a payment. Your gateway provider will determine your billing address requirements. Your gateway should provide guidelines on handling state and province names and their abbreviations. Additionally, Chargent is designed to use a country text field or match with abbreviations.
See Billing Address Fields for more details.
Card Number Formats #
The first few digits of a credit card indicate whether it is a Visa, Mastercard, American Express, or Discover Card. The first six to eight digits identify the bank that issued the card, and the last digit is a check-digit, used to detect errors. The remaining digits (usually nine) are the cardholder’s account number.
Card Type | Card Number Prefix/Range | Number Length | Card Validation Number Length |
American Express | 34 and 37 | 15 digits | 4 digits |
MasterCard | 51-55 | 16 digits or 19 digits | 3 digits |
Visa | 4 | 16 digits or 19 digits | 3 digits |
Discover | 30000000-30599999 30950000-30959999 35280000-35899999 3638396465 601162212600-62699999 62400000-62699999 62820000-62889999 | 14 digits or 16 digits | 3 digits |
Card Verification Number (Security Code) #
The CVN (Card Verification Number), also referred to as CVV2 (Card Verification Value 2), CVC2 (Card Validation Code 2), CVC (Card Verification Code) or CID (Card Identification Number) is a three-digit code that appears on the back of credit cards, beside the signature area. For American Express cards, it is a four-digit code on the front of the card.

In conjunction with AVS, card verification numbers are used to reduce credit card fraud in ‘card-not-present’ transactions (e-commerce or phone, where the physical card is not being swiped). Card verification codes help you reduce the scope of your PCI compliance.
There are a number of response codes, but some common ones are:
- M = Matched.
- N = Not matched.
- P = Not processed by the processor for an unspecified reason.
Note that CVV2 / CVC2 values are never stored in your Salesforce account for PCI Compliance reasons, so they should typically only be used the first time a card is authorized or charged. Chargent recommends tokenization if you are going to be processing recurring or subscription billing. This will allow you to send the first charge to get a token that can be used for future payments.
For more information about the Card Verification Number in Chargent, see our related Knowledge Articles.
Considerations and Best Practices #
- There are times when it is preferable to take payments from a bank account instead of a credit card. For more information, see ACH vs. Credit Cards.
- Chargent recommends enabling tokenization for your credit card payments. Using tokenization, Chargent transfers sensitive payment details using tokens, keeping payment information secure. For more information, please see Understanding Tokenization.
- Chargent can save tokenized credit card information for later use using Chargent’s Payment Method feature. For more information, visit Setting Up Payment Methods.

See Also
Quick Start Guide
Understanding Payments
Address Verification System (AVS)
Chargent Terminology