Merchant FCA status

Open a merchant → Overview → Merchant card. The row is FCA status with ⓘ About the merchant FCA status. Read-only until you click Edit Merchant in the page header (inline on the card — not a popup editor).

FCA = Financial Conduct Authority (UK finance regulator). This field records whether a merchant is authorised to communicate regulated credit promotions (APR, monthly prices, representative examples).

Click FCA status

1. Merchants → open the merchant → Overview.
2. Click Edit Merchant. The FCA status value becomes a dropdown: Not specified, Authorised, Not authorised.
3. Helper under the select: "Not authorised" locks the finance offer summary to the Non-regulated template and removes products from Partner API responses.
4. Click Save Changes. The field only writes when you actually changed it (unrelated saves do not rewrite it).
5. Switching to Not authorised opens confirm Set FCA status to "Not authorised"? then: This locks the finance offer summary template mode to the Non-regulated template and removes all products / rep examples from this merchant's Partner API responses. Cancel on that dialog aborts the whole save.
6. Add Merchant can set FCA status (optional) on create. Creating a merchant never requires this field.

Read-only Not authorised is shown in red on the Merchant card.

Where to find it

Same row as above: Merchant card → FCA status. Change it with Edit Merchant, or optionally when adding a merchant.

Values:

UI label	Stored value	Required?
Not specified	(field absent / empty)	No — default for all existing merchants
Authorised	authorised	No
Not authorised	not_authorised	No

Creating a merchant never requires this field.

What each status means

Only Not authorised changes live behaviour. The other two are “carry on as configured”.

Not specified

Default until someone records a status.

• Finance offer summary Template mode stays whatever ops set (Auto / No-price / Non-regulated).
• Partner API returns normal products and a priced finance offer summary (when the merchant otherwise has products).

Use when: you don’t know yet, or haven’t checked.

Authorised

Merchant is allowed to promote regulated finance.

• Same runtime behaviour as Not specified (no lock, full quotes).
• Difference is record-keeping: you’ve confirmed FCA authorisation.

Use when: you’ve verified they hold FCA authorisation.

Not authorised

Merchant must not show regulated finance promotion.

Three systems lock automatically:

1. Storefront / Quick-Start — Template mode is forced to Non-regulated template (always) and cannot be changed in Finance Offer Summary settings. Copy is headline + “Learn more” only (no APR, no “from £X/mo”).
2. Partner API — Partners still get 200 OK, but:
   • finance_offer_summary = non-regulated line only
   • products = empty array (no quotes / rep examples)
   • products_notice explains why (MERCHANT_FCA_NOT_AUTHORISED)
   • deposit_adjustment is included when the requested deposit is below the merchant deposit floor (explicit merchantMinimumDeposit, or the uniform per-product Min Deposit % when no global floor is set). Learn more uses the corrected deposit and loan. affected_products is an empty array because this merchant has no product list. See Calculator deposit dropdown.
3. Rate-card downloads — the storefront SDK skips both the env rate card and the shared fallback, and writes an empty object to finmatch_rate_cards (clears a stale catalogue from localStorage). Calculator and headless Apply still run without a credit-product picker. Fail-safe: if runtime config has no fcaStatus stamp, the SDK still downloads. Re-save Credit products or FCA status so merchant-api stamps profile fcaStatus onto the merchant row. See Rate cards overview.

Use when: the merchant is not FCA authorised to communicate regulated credit promotions.

Credit-product dropdown: Not authorised Quick-Start usually hides the calculator credit-product control (headline + “Learn more” only). Admin Enquiries → Credit Product must not be read as “the shopper picked this” or “Propensio received this”. Live today the column can still show our first-eligible snapshot. Agreed, not shipped: show - when the dropdown was hidden. See Admin Enquiries: Credit Product column.

Memory aid

Status	Regulated copy OK?	Partner products?	Storefront rate cards?
Not specified	Yes (as configured)	Yes	Yes (env + shared fallback)
Authorised	Yes	Yes	Yes (env + shared fallback)
Not authorised	No — locked to non-regulated	No — empty list (may still emit deposit_adjustment)	No — SDK skips both objects

What admins will see

• On the Merchant card, Not authorised is shown in red. Inline edit helper: "Not authorised" locks the finance offer summary to the Non-regulated template and removes products from Partner API responses.
• In Finance Offer Summary Settings, Template mode is disabled with a red lock notice while status is Not authorised.
• Saving Not authorised from Edit Merchant shows a confirmation dialog explaining the lock and Partner API effect. Storefront rate-card skip is live even if that dialog copy still only names the template lock and Partner API.
• View JSON → Field reference lists profile fcaStatus and the stamped runtime copy (duplicate: Canonical on the profile; stamped onto runtime so the SDK can skip rate-card downloads for Not authorised merchants). Runtime also lists merchantMinimumDeposit.
• Merchant history records FCA status changes (and the forced Template mode change). History path for a merchant-wide floor is merchantMinimumDeposit.minimum_percentage.

Partner-facing docs

Partners should use the public docs (not this admin guide):

• Non-regulated merchants (API reference)
• Getting started — empty products note

Related admin topics

• Finance offer summary template mode
• Admin help & docs — how ⓘ panels link here
• Merchant Page Editing
• Calculator deposit dropdown
• Rate cards overview
• Partner API overview (internal ops)