# Support
source: https://developer.mastercard.com/carbon-calculator/documentation/support/index.md

## FAQs {#faqs}

The **Carbon Calculator** is the product offered by Mastercard to enable the issuer to help their environmentally conscious consumers understand how their spending behavior impacts carbon emissions. The **Carbon Calculator API** is the set of services that allows the issuer to do so. There are two integration options available depending on how the payment transactions are processed for the payment cards issued by an issuer. You can choose either one of them or both depending upon your situation and need.

Following are these options:

* **Option 1** - Transactions processed by Mastercard.
  * This is the most advanced option which provides many out-of-the-box features. Using this option, an issuer will be able to provide more value to their consumers in less time as compared to Option 2.
* **Option 2.a** - Transactions not processed by Mastercard.
  * This option shall be used when an issuer wants to directly calculate transaction footprints based on consumer's payment transactions.
* **Option 2.b** - Transactions not processed by Mastercard (File based).
  * This option shall be used when an issuer wants to directly calculate transaction footprints using File based scoring for transactions not processed by Mastercard.

For more information, refer to the [homepage](https://developer.mastercard.com/carbon-calculator/documentation/index.md).
You can only try out or test the Carbon Calculator API in the Sandbox environment. To test the API, the following are the pre-requisites:

1. The issuer must have created a project for Carbon Calculator API.
2. The issuer must have been onboarded for Carbon Calculator API with a valid BIN range by Mastercard.
3. The issuer must have access to the Sandbox environment.

Refer to the [Quick Start Guide](https://developer.mastercard.com/carbon-calculator/documentation/quick-start-guide/index.md) for step by step process.
Tip: To create your project on Mastercard Developers, refer to the [Before You Start](https://developer.mastercard.com/carbon-calculator/documentation/index.md#before-you-start) section for more information. Tip: To test the Carbon Calculator API via Insomnia, refer to the [Test API in Sandbox using Insomnia](https://developer.mastercard.com/carbon-calculator/tutorial/api-testing/index.md) tutorial. Transaction Footprint is a block of information that contains the following data after transaction scoring is done on a payment transaction:

1. Carbon emission (in grams and ounces)
2. Category information (main-category, sub-category, and sector)
Carbon Scoring or Transaction Scoring is a process of calculating Transaction Footprints for one or more payment transactions. Merchant Category Code (MCC) is an assigned four-digit number that identifies a merchant's primary business based on annual sales volume. Customers must include a valid MCC in all transaction requests for successful carbon scoring.

### AiiA-code {#aiia-code}

Instead of relying only on MCC as the category identifier, the AiiA code provides additional mappings to the carbon calculator and supports new ways to categorize transactions and score them. For example, the customer can pass the AiiA Code instead of the MCC.

**Note:** AiiA is Mastercard's open banking acquisition and already has a defined set of categories for its products.

For more information, please reach out to your Mastercard representative. Alternatively, please send a request to [carboncalculator@mastercard.com](mailto:carboncalculator@mastercard.com) for further help.
Bank Identification Number (BIN) is the first 6-digit or 8-digit of the Primary Account Number (PAN), an industry standard that is used to identify the issuer during payment transaction routing. In the [Add Payment Cards](https://developer.mastercard.com/carbon-calculator/documentation/use-cases/add_payment_card_single_and_bulk/index.md) service, the Carbon Calculator application validates if a requested PAN is already registered for the requesting issuer or not. If the PAN is found to be registered, then the Carbon Calculator will respond with the paymentCardId of the same card along with its status as ACTIVE. During issuer onboarding on Carbon Calculator application by Mastercard, we make sure that only valid BINs are assigned to the issuer. These BINs are assigned only after receiving consent from the issuer.

Now when the issuer invokes the [Add Payment Cards](https://developer.mastercard.com/carbon-calculator/documentation/use-cases/add_payment_card_single_and_bulk/index.md) service, the Carbon Calculator application validates the requested PAN for a valid BIN assigned to the requesting issuer. If the PAN is found to be invalid, then the request is rejected. Otherwise, PAN is allowed to be registered for the issuer.
Mastercard takes utmost care while handling sensitive and private consumer data. And the same care has been taken for Carbon Calculator API implementation as well.

The Carbon Calculator API is [PCI DSS certified](https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/). You can rest assured that your data is handled securely and is in safe hands.
If you already have some PANs registered with your account then you are eligible to receive near real-time transaction footprints notification for them.

You need to implement the `/payment-cards/transaction-footprints/notifications` endpoint.

For more details, refer to the [Transaction Footprint Notification](https://developer.mastercard.com/carbon-calculator/documentation/use-cases/txn_footprint_notification/index.md) use case.
For more details, refer to the [Delete Payment Card](https://developer.mastercard.com/carbon-calculator/documentation/use-cases/delete_payment_cards/index.md) use case. The API is free to use in the Sandbox environment with test data. You should do all your testing in the Sandbox environment and make sure that it meets your expectations. However, when you are ready to move to the Production environment, contact your Mastercard representative.

Note that the Mastercard Customer Implementation Services (CIS) may charge for creating the new implementation project. Details of these charges will be communicated separately.
If you don't have a Mastercard representative, send a request to [carboncalculator@mastercard.com](mailto:carboncalculator@mastercard.com) for further help. This functionality is available when integrating with:

* **Option 1** - Mastercard will perform the carbon impact of transactions as and when they occur, so customers must pull the transactions via the [Historical Transaction Footprint](https://developer.mastercard.com/carbon-calculator/documentation/use-cases/historical_txn_footprint/index.md) API.
* **Option 2** - It requires customers to provide the transactions that need to be scored, due to this the Carbon Calculator will not have any historical data to allow customers to retrieve the scores from.
Mastercard will notify you as soon as the transaction is processed (i.e., as soon as we see the authorization) and is scored. Yes, our systems rely on the MCC category to provide the carbon impact. The main difference between Mastercard automated scoring \& Customer provide transactions for scoring is that:

* **Option 1** - Mastercard automated scoring

  * Mastercard can be confident that the assigned MCC category corresponds to the transaction type based on the internal system validation.
* **Option 2** - Customer provide transactions for scoring

  * It relies on customers to assign the correct MCC to the transactions they supply for the Carbon Calculator system.

## Get Help {#get-help}

### Contact us for technical support. {#contact-us-for-technical-support}