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Introduction

To find your way into processing online transactions effectively requires gaining a lot of knowledge. Our glossary will help you greatly with this task, as it breaks down the most important industry terms in digestible bits.

List of terms

Term Description Further Reading
3-D Secure

A security measure against fraud for online payments with credit cards.

When paying online, your customers are redirected to their issuer during the payment process. They need to identify themselves as the rightful owners of the credit card used for the payment. The 3-D Secure identification process is the equivalent to the PIN number of a credit card.

With the introduction of the SCA guidelines, 3-D Secure (also known as 3-D Secure v2/3DS v2) is generally mandatory for online transactions. Nevertheless, SCA allows exemptions/exceptions in some cases

3-D Secure v2 / 3DS v2

The updated version of 3-D Secure as defined by the PSD2 guidelines

Acquirer / acquiring bank

A bank that is your acceptance partner for online payments. A contract with an acquirer enables you to activate payment methods you want to offer your customers.
During the payment process, the acquirer requests the authorisation / capture of funds at your customer’s issuer. For successful payments, the acquirer collects these funds and pays them to you eventually

Authorisation

Your request via one of our integration modes to reserve (that is, block) funds temporarily on a credit card. To receive the funds eventually, you have to capture them in a separate request.

Alternatively, you can cancel authorisations instead of capturing them.

Requesting transactions in two steps (authorisation > capture) is common practice for goods / services that are not delivered immediately after they are ordered. For example, Hotels authorise funds when customers reserve a room. Once the customers have used the room and checked out, only then will the hotel capture the funds. If customers do not show up after a reservation, hotels will cancel the funds instead or capture only a part of the reserved funds.

Cancellation

Your request via one of our integration modes to de-block previously authorised funds on a credit card. The de-blocked funds can then be authorised for other purchases

Challenge flow

One of two possible scenarios of a 3-D Secure authentication process.

The cardholder must proactively proof that s/he is the rightful owner of the credit card s/he is about to use.

Hence, the payment flow is interrupted: The cardholder has to authenticate her/himself according to the SCA principle.

Chargeback (fee)

The issuer’s request to an acquirer for paying back funds to a customer whose credit card was used in a previous purchase.

Chargebacks happen if a cardholder considers a payment to a merchant unjustified due to fraud (misuse of her / his credit card) or a commercial dispute (customer is unsatisfied with the quality of the purchased goods/services or did not receive them at all)

(Data) capture

Your request via one of our integration modes to transfer authorised funds to your acquirer and to receive them eventually. It still takes up to several days until your receive the money from your acquirer

Direct Sale / 1 step payment

The combination of authorisation and capture in one operation. The funds on the credit card are immediately booked to be transferred to your acquirer. It still takes up to several days until you receive the money


Full Service

A contract between you and us combining both the gateway service and the acquiring service for several payment methods.

Frictionless flow

One of two possible scenarios of a 3-D Secure authentication process.

The merchant has provided enough data about the cardholder in the transaction request itself, so the cardholder’s issuer considers the risk of a fraudulent use of the credit card in question low.

Hence, the payment flow is not interrupted: The cardholder will not have to proof that s/he is the rightful owner of the credit card s/he is about to use

Gateway / Payment gateway

See Payment Service Provider

Hosted Checkout Page

One of our integration modes.

You send your customers from the webshop to our secure payment portal for entering credit card data. Very low PCI DSS requirements, as you do not have to manage sensitive data at all

Hosted Tokenization Page

One of our integration modes.

Your merge seamlessly a payment form hosted on our platform with your webshop to create (temporary) token from your customers’ credit cards. In a second step, you use this token to process transactions via Server-to-server.


In contrast to the Hosted Checkout Page solution, your customers do not leave the familiar webshop environment during the payment.

Integration (mode)

Possible ways for you to link a webshop to our platform and to use our service.
The choice for an integration mode depends on

  • Your willingness and your available infrastructure to handle sensitive data. Each integration mode offers different levels of data security and requires you to meet specific precautions. This is defined in the PCI DSS regulation.
  • Your business model
  • Payment methods you would like to offer, as not all payment methods work with all integration modes

We offer the following integration modes. You can use them independently and simultaneously

Interchange fees

Fees your bank (that is, your acquirer) pays to your customers’ banks (their issuers). It is used to cover the issuers’ costs of line of credits and handling fraud cases.

Issuer

The bank issuing the credit cards to customers for (online) shopping

Maintenance operation

A follow-up action on an already existing transaction such as a capture/cancellation

Merchant Id

See PSPID

MID

Your unique identifier you have received from your acquirer. This is (in most cases) a (alpha)numeric character string.

When configuring a payment method for you, we add this MID to your PSPID you wish to use for transaction processing. Our platform uses the MID to channel your transaction requests for this payment method to your acquirer

Merchant Portal

The portal on our platform to login to your PSPID. The Merchant Portal is where you configure necessary settings to process transactions.

Mobile/Client Integration

One of our integration modes.

You create your own mobile payment app using one of our Client SDKs.

Partial capture / cancellation

See capture/cancellation

Instead of processing the full amount in a capture/cancellation maintenance operation, only a part of the full amount is captured/cancelled.

Depending on how the merchant requests this partial maintenance operation, the transaction is left open for further partial maintenance operations until the full amount is processed

Payment Service Provider

A company that offers technical solutions to you to perform online payments.
As transaction processing involves dealing with sensitive credit card data, a merchant must ensure that the security of these data is not compromised. A PSP ensures the data is sent back and forth safely between the your webshop and the acquirers / issuers.

PCI DSS

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is a ruleset to guarantee maximum data security for card holders. If you want to do online transactions, you must meet their requirements. Depending on the integration mode, you must meet different requirements.

Platform

See Payment Service Provider

PSD2 The European-Union-specific SCA guidelines
PSPID

Your account on our platform. The Payment Service Provider ID is the your link between your webshop, your acquirer and your customers' banks (issuers):

  • All your transactions processed are channeled via your PSPID
  • The place where you configure your contact details / available payment methods / technical settings etc. for transactions processing via the Merchant Portal
  • Our API reference refers to the PSPID as the "merchantId"
SCA / Strong Customer Authentication

The integral part of the 3-D Secure authentication process. It requires cardholders to authenticate themselves with at least two of the three methods:

  • Something they know (PIN, password, …)
  • Something they possess (card reader, mobile. …)
  • Something they are (voice recognition, fingerprint, …)

Scheme fee

Fees that acquirers pay to card scheme brands (i.e. Visa / MasterCard). These scheme brands use the funds for maintaining their payment network (connecting all issuers / acquirers offering the scheme brand)

Settlement

The process of transferring funds from the issuer to the acquirer after a successful online transaction. Depending on the payment method / acquirer, this process might take several hours or even days.

Server-to-server

One of our integration modes.
Host a payment page in your own webshop environment. You collect and send the credit card data via your server. In a second step you send the data to our platform for further processing.
Very high PCI DSS requirements, as you need to ensure your server safely transfers the data to our platform.

Status

Every transaction on our platform has a status. It indicates whether it was successful / rejected / refunded etc. It represents the transaction’s station in the transaction life cycle.

Token

A credit card profile safely stored on our platform. Instead of storing the card by yourself, you only use an identifier or token pointing to this profile for processing transactions. Very useful for

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