---
updatedAt: 2025-12-16T04:04:02.000Z
agentTools:
  siteIndex: https://merchants.westpac.com.au/llms.txt
  projectIndex: https://merchants.westpac.com.au/onlinepay/llms.txt
---

# Accept cards from other countries

## Overview

By default, OnlinePay is configured to accept cards from a small number of countries:

* Australia
* New Zealand
* United States
* United Kingdom and Northern Ireland
* Japan

The format used to specify the accepted countries is as follows:

`Issuer country is not equal to {Country [Country Code]}`

This will result in transactions that *are not* one of the countries listed being blocked.

If you want to accept cards issued by other countries, you need to create a blocking rule to allow these transactions.

## Adding a country as an accepted card issuer

To add a new country to the list of accepted card issuing countries, you can add a country to the existing list of accepted countries, or you can create a new ruleset. If you want to create a rule for a specific MID that does not apply to the rest of the organisation, you will need to create a new ruleset.

This example shows you how to add a country to the existing list.

1. Log in to the OnlinePay dashboard.
2. Navigate to the **Administration > Advanced Settings > Blocking Rulesets** page.
3. Unless previously edited, the list of accepted card issuing countries will appear first on the page.
4. (Optional) If you have never edited your Blocking Rules before, click **Customise Rulesets** in the upper-right corner, then click **Customise** to enable editing.
5. Click **Edit ruleset**.\
   ![](https://files.readme.io/b60833970338b586f5ed69ffb9752028d403c0375d826869c04c701c96e3a2e0-add-rule.png)
6. Click **Add rule**.\
   ![](https://files.readme.io/b60833970338b586f5ed69ffb9752028d403c0375d826869c04c701c96e3a2e0-add-rule.png)
7. Select `Issuer country` from the **Rules** drop-down list of available rules.
8. Select `is not equal to` from the list of available conditions.
9. Start typing the name of the country you want to accept payments from (e.g. Canada) to filter the list, then select the country from the results.\
   ![](https://files.readme.io/233744985c8ead0912fff52b9af14494a93b7de1eb7a8dd14e2ed7a9dac28a93-issuer-canada.png)
10. Click **Save changes** to apply the new rule.

## Block transactions from a card issuing country

To block transactions from a specific card issuing country, you can create a new ruleset or edit an existing ruleset, the same way you would for adding a new country as an accepted card issuer.

To block a specific country/countries, follow the first five steps above to create a new issuer country rule.

1. Select `Issuer country` from the **Rules** drop-down list of available rules.
2. Select `is equal to` from the list of available conditions.
3. Start typing the name of the country you want to block payments from to filter the list, then select the country from the results.\
   ![](https://files.readme.io/8a2f97d7bd8b6aa29fe1196159dda62716f7b339c29bca3fbf049e7930074d10-block-a-country.png)
4. Click **Save changes** to apply the new rule.