a
Acquirer
An acquirer is a financial organisation that provides facilities for businesses to accept payments and receive funds.
API
An Application Programming Interface is a particular set of rules and specifications that software programs can follow to communicate with each other.
AVS
An address verification service is a fraud prevention tool that checks the shopper's address and postcode.
b
BIN solution
The first 6 numbers of a credit or debit card. All payment card numbers conform to ISO 7812 and the BIN can be used to determine the card type, issuing bank, country issued and if the card is a commercial card or not.
c
Callback
The callback is the URL used to process payment responses that are displayed to shoppers.
Chargeback
Chargeback is a sum of money deducted by a credit card company from your account to cover losses for disallowed or fraudulent transactions.
CNP
Card-not-present, a term used to describe a merchant situation where the consumer makes a card transaction without being physically present.
CVC/CVV
Card verification codes or card verification values are three digit numbers printed on the back of debit and credit cards and are used to check that the card is physically in the possession of the cardholder.
d
DCC
Dynamic currency conversion is a service in which holders of credit or debit cards have the cost of a transaction converted to their local currency when making a payment in a foreign currency.
DNS Mapping
Domain Name System is the procedure in which names are mapped to IP addresses and vice versa.
e
E-wallet
An electronic wallet is an encrypted storage medium which holds credit card and other financial information that can be used to complete transactions.
ECI
Electronic Commerce Indicator indicates the 3-D Secure status of a transaction.
EMV
EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, a global standard for inter-operation of integrated circuit cards.
g
Geolocation
Geolocation is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a mobile phone or an internet-connected computer terminal.
h
Hosted payment page
A hosted payment page uses HTML forms to pass information to a third party payment service, for payment processing.
HTTPS
Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer indicates that the connection between client and browser is secure.
i
I-Frame
An Inline Frame is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website.
l
Level 1 provider
A level 1 provider is a company that has access to cardholder data as part of a payment.
Liability shift
If a transaction has been authenticated, the issuing bank is then liable for the chargeback of transactions that are deemed fraudulent.
m
Merchant account
A merchant account is an agreement with a merchant bank that allows a seller to accept payments by credit or debit cards.
Micropayments
A micropayment is a financial transaction involving a very small sum of money and usually one that occurs online.
Mobile commerce
Mobile commerce refers to transactions that are made or facilitated using mobile devices.
MOTO
Mail order and telephone orders - card details are taken by either telephone or mail order by the seller.
n
NFC
Near field communication allows for simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in close range of each other.
p
PCI
Payment Card Industry denoting the debit, credit, prepaid, e-purse, ATM and POS cards and associated businesses.
PCI DSS
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards are a set of processes and procedures that must be followed by all organisations handling cardholder data, in order to maintain security and reduce fraud.
PSP
A payment service provider provides the secure link between your website and your merchant account to ensure the transaction remains secure.
q
Quarantine service
A payment can be automatically suspended and quarantined until the merchant decides whether to process the payment or not.
s
SecureCode
SecureCode is a verification method based on the Card Security Code.
Shopping cart
Shopping cart software creates an online shopping basket for an ecommerce website, and must be used in addition to a payment processing platform.
Social commerce
Social commerce involves using media and social media to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services.
t
Tokenisation
Tokenisation is a process which divides input text into units called tokens of different types, e.g. words, numbers and punctuation.
v
Velocity checks
A velocity check is a fraud protection tool that enables merchants to be notified of suspicious activity on their account.
Verified by Visa
Verified by Visa is a fraud screening initiative to provide a more secure method of authenticating the cardholder at time of transaction.
Virtual terminal
Also known as MOTO, virtual terminal allows you to receive orders via telephone, fax or by mail order.