Described herein are systems and techniques in which a service provider may determine one or more capabilities of an authorization provider. To do this, the service provider may, upon receiving a request to determine authorization provider capabilities that includes at least an account identifier and an indication of a transaction type, identify a prototype message template associated with the indicated transaction type from a plurality of prototype transaction templates. The service provider may then overwrite a number of default data values with data values specific to the transaction to generate a prototype message for the transaction, which it may then send to the authorization provider. Upon receiving a response from the authorization provider, the service provider may determine whether the authorization provider is capable of conducting a transaction of the indicated transaction type based on information included within the received response.