RESOURCES · GLOSSARY
Payments words, in plain English.
Every term below shows up in a contract, a statement or a support ticket at some point. No marketing definitions — what it means and why it costs you something.
A
- AcquirerCards
- The licensed bank that accepts card payments on your behalf and settles the money to you. Its margin is one of the lines in your effective rate.
- AISPay by Bank
- Account Information Services. Read-only access to bank account data, with the customer's consent. It is not payment initiation, and it moves no money.
C
- ChargebackCards
- A card payment reversed after the fact on the cardholder's say-so. Carries a fixed fee per case, win or lose. Pay by Bank has no equivalent rail.
- Card schemeCards
- Visa, Mastercard and the rest. They set the rules and the scheme fees that sit on top of interchange.
D
- DisputeCards
- The process a chargeback runs through. Evidence, deadlines and an outcome you do not control.
I
- InterchangeCards
- The part of a card fee that goes to the customer's own bank. It is set by the scheme, not negotiated by your provider, and it disappears entirely on a bank payment.
- IssuerCards
- The bank that issued your customer's card and decides whether to approve the payment. Most declines are its decision.
K
- KYBCompliance
- Know Your Business. The checks run on a company before it can take payments — ownership, directors, licences and source of funds.
M
- MCCCompliance
- Merchant Category Code. Four digits that describe what you sell, and one reason issuers decline some businesses more than others.
- Merchant of recordCompliance
- The entity that legally sells to the customer and carries the liability for it. On a platform, this is the first question to answer, not the last.
O
- Open BankingPay by Bank
- The framework that lets a customer approve a payment directly in their own bank. The rail underneath Pay by Bank in the UK and EU.
P
- PISPPay by Bank
- Payment Initiation Service Provider. The regulated role that initiates a payment from the customer's account, once they approve it in their bank.
- PSD2Compliance
- The EU rules that made Open Banking and strong customer authentication mandatory. The UK has its own equivalent regime.
S
- SCACompliance
- Strong Customer Authentication. Two factors before a payment goes through. On a bank payment, the customer's own bank handles it.
- SafeguardingCompliance
- Holding client money separately from company money, with a licensed institution, so it is protected if the company fails.
- SettlementSettlement
- When the money actually reaches your account, as opposed to when the payment was authorised. T+1 means the next working day.
T
- TokenisationCards
- Replacing a card number with a reference that is useless if stolen. It is what keeps card data off your servers.
- T+1Settlement
- Settlement on the next working day after the transaction. T+0 is same day, T+3 is what some providers still quote.
Still sounds like a foreign language?
Send your current statement. We translate it line by line and tell you which of these words is costing you money.