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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Acquirer, or acquiring bank - The institution or organization that has a business relationship with a merchant and processes the merchant's transactions and credits payment to the merchant account.
Address Verification Service (AVS) - A service used primarily by Mail Order/Telephone Order (MOTO) merchants to verify the cardholder's address. This does not guarantee that a transaction is valid.
Authentication - Identification of individuals and businesses through the use of digital certificates.
Authorization - The process by which permission to perform a transaction is granted by a card issuer. The process confirms that credit card limits are not exceeded and reserves the specified amount of credit.
Automated Clearing House (ACH) - A secure system that enables electronic payments to be transferred from one bank to another.
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Bankcard - A credit card issued by a Visa® or MasterCard® sponsored financial institution.
Batch - A composite of captures and credits accumulated over a period of time, although generally no more than one day, that is waiting to be settled with the merchant's acquiring financial institution.
Batch Close - The process of sending a batch to the financial institution for settlement.
Browser - A client program that runs on an end user's computer, linking it to the World Wide Web.
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Capture - A transaction performed on a previously authorized transaction after a merchant has shipped goods or services to the customer. This transaction triggers the movement of funds from the issuer to the acquirer and then to the merchant's account.
Card Issuer - A financial institution that issues cards to individual cardholders.
Card Verification Value (CVV or CVV2) - The 3 or 4 digit number printed on the back of a credit card. In card not present transactions, it is used to reduce fraud and verify that the person using the credit card has physical possession of the card.
Cardholder - An individual or business that has established an account with a credit or debit card issuer. A cardholder is eligible to initiate a payment card transaction.
Chargeback - The attempt by a cardholder to return all or part of a settled transaction back to the Acquirer.
Credit - A transaction that transfers money from the merchant to the cardholder's account.
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Data Encryption - The scrambling of information sent over the Internet. Data encryption ensures that only the intended recipient has the ability to read and understand the information.
Demand Deposit Account (DDA) - The business bank account that is credited and debited for fees, deposits, and adjustments.
Discount Rate - The percentage of sales amounts that a merchant processor charges a merchant to give credit for depositing and handling merchants' daily credit card transactions.
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Gateway - An application that accepts transactions from online merchant storefronts and routes them to a financial institution's processing system.
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Internet - A global information system formed by combining thousands of smaller networks to create a single larger network.
Issuer - A financial institution or other organization that supplies payment cards, such as credit or debit cards. An issuer sets the card or account holder's credit limit. The issuer subsequently bills the cardholder for repayment of the credit extended.
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Mail Order/Telephone Order (MOTO) - Credit card transactions initiated by mail, phone or Internet, where the merchant does not see the actual credit card. Also referred to as card not present transactions.
Merchant Category Code (MCC) - A code that is assigned by an Acquirer to identify a merchant's type of business and the merchandise sold.
Merchant Identification Number (MID) - A unique number assigned to each merchant location by the Acquirer to identify the merchant's processing activity.
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Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI) - The PCI Standard is a mandatory global standard established by the Card Associations to ensure the protection of cardholder data. Based on twelve guidelines, the PCI Standard requires merchants to make their physical and virtual environments secure to ensure protection of cardholder data.
Point of Sale (POS) - The point at which a product is paid for and delivered. On the Internet, point-of-sale software allows merchants to accept transactions on their online storefronts and conduct follow-on transactions with their financial institution.
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Recurring Transaction - A transaction that has been authorized by the cardholder to charge their account periodically.
Retrieval Request - A request from a cardholder's bank to a merchant for an original or legible copy of a sales record for a charge that is being disputed.
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Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) - A protocol developed by Netscape that is used to provide secure transmission of data between a merchant and a cardholder, on the Internet.
Settlement - The step in the clearing process when the acquirer credits the merchant account with the dollar amount of a credit card purchase, and the bankcard association (such as Visa and MasterCard) credits the acquirer and debits the card issuer for the transaction.
SIC Code - The Standard Industry Classification code assigned to companies to identify their business type.
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Terminal Identification Number (TID) - A unique number assigned to specific point of sale terminals.
Transaction - Any action between a cardholder and a merchant that results in activity on the account, such as an authorization and settlement. Merchants and financial institutions also conduct follow-on transactions such as capture and credit, that affect the cardholder account.
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Virtual Terminal - A web-based terminal used to accept credit card and electronic payments. A merchant logs into a secure web page to enter payment information and then submits the transaction for processing.
Void - A charge type that cancels a previous transaction and will not bill the buyer.
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