Payment glossary

Electronic, bank-to-bank money transfers processed through the Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network. According to Nacha, the association responsible for these transfers, the ACH network is a batch processing system that banks, and other financial institutions use to aggregate these transactions for processing.

An ACH return is a message that lets the ODFI know the ACH Network couldn’t make the deposit or collect funds from the receiver’s account (RDFI). See Payment Disputes for more information.

An issuer-assigned number that identifies an account for posting transactions.

A financial institution or Merchant Service Provider (MSP) that facilitates and manages credit card processing on behalf of a merchant customer.

The bank or financial institution that holds the merchant’s bank account that receives deposits from transaction processing proceeds.

The credit card processing entity an acquirer partners with to provide merchants with transaction clearing, settlement, billing, and reporting services.

The AVS is a service provided by credit card issuers to authenticate the purchaser (customer) as the authorized cardholder.

An approval code issued by or on behalf of a cardholder’s issuing bank to validate a transaction for a merchant or affiliate bank.

The card issuer institution’s electronic message to an authorization request from a merchant. This is most often provided via Point-of-Sale (POS) equipment or a credit card reader.

A feature built into some point-of-sale software and credit card machines that allow automatic batch closing (settlement) at a certain time.

A unique 6-digit number assigned by Visa to each acquirer. Mastercard has a similar identifier called ICA (Interbank Card Association).

A six-digit number that identifies the card issuer and is part of the entire payment card number on a payment card.

A group of payments sent for processing per paypoint. Batches are automatically created by Payabli and are processed at the end of each day. Batches can be money in or money out.

In Payabli, bills represent an invoice from a vendor that a paypoint is expected to pay. See Add Bills for more information.

Boarding is a process that includes gathering the necessary information from a merchant for underwriting, and setting them up to process payments.

Online form used to collect data for both money in and money out boarding processes. For money in, the form collects relevant merchant data before enabling them to begin processing customer payments. For money out, the form collects relevant information from each paypoint that want to use Payabli’s platform to issue payments to their vendors.

Boarding links allow you to send a link to an onboarding application to a merchant. The link can be sent either via email or by cutting and pasting the link to the application template.

A type of card transaction where card isn’t present at the point-of-sale.

A Card Verification Value (CVV) is the three-digit or four-digit value card used to verify card-not-present transactions.

All Personally Identifiable Information (PII) associated with a cardholder.

A chargeback provides cardholders with a way to dispute a transaction with a merchant. In a chargeback, the card issuer withholds the disputed funds from the business until the card issuer works things out and decides what to do. If the merchant loses the dispute, the withheld funds are returned to the cardholder. If the merchant wins the dispute, the disputed funds are returned to the merchant. See Chargebacks and ACH Returns.

The customer is the entity that pays the paypoint for whatever good or service they’re consuming. Customers can have several pay methods associated with them. For example, a customer might have saved methods for a Visa and AMEX card, and a bank account on file for ACH. Customers can also have several payers associated with them. For example, a student could be the customer of a school, but the two separate parents can each be associated with that student.

A debit card, sometimes called a check card, is linked to a source of funds, typically a cardholder’s checking account. Unlike a credit card which extends credit to the cardholder, the debit card uses the connected account’s available balance for transactions.

Entities are the different hierarchical categories that make up Payabli’s infrastructure. Entities consist of: organizations, paypoints, customers, and vendors.

Entrypoint is an alias ID assigned by Payabli to identify an organization or paypoint. See Entrypoint Overview for more information.

Custodial account that lets a company manage funds on behalf of, or “for the benefit of” their users without assuming legal ownership of that account.

An invoice is an itemized list of goods and services that a paypoint sends to a customer, expecting payment.

Also known as Pay In, money in processes allow merchants to collect money from their customers.

Also known as Pay Out, money out processes allow merchants to send payments from their business to suppliers and vendors.

Nacha governs the ACH Network, the payment system that drives direct deposits and direct payments to all U.S. bank and credit union accounts.

An ODFI, or Originating Depository Financial Institution, is the bank that initiates ACH transactions on behalf of the originator (such as a merchant using Payabli to process payments). The ODFI sends the ACH files to the ACH operator as part of the electronic funds transfer process.

Software platform or other entity that manages a network of merchants (paypoints).

PartnerHub is the web app for organizations to manage their sub-organizations, paypoints, customers, and vendors.

PayHub is the web app for paypoints to manage their customers and vendors.

Pay Ops processes and tools let you manage payment operations such as boarding, disputes, and compliance.

A Paypoint represents a merchant that’s accepting payment from customers or sending payments to vendors and suppliers.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and supporting documents are a set of industry tools that guide the proper handling of cardholder data. The standard itself provides a framework for creating robust security processes that include preventing, detecting, and responding to security incidents. All entities that store, process, or transmit cardholder data must be PCI compliant.

A Point of Interaction (POI) is the location where card data is captured via integrated software and hardware during a transaction. In the context of Payabli, POI refers to cloud devices, and these devices typically process transactions via integrated circuit (chip) technology and/or magnetic stripe cards.

A collection of an organization’s sub-organizations and paypoints.

Income from processing transactions on behalf of merchants.

A retrieval request is a process initiated by a credit card issuer on behalf of a cardholder who disputes a transaction, requesting documentation from the merchant to validate the transaction in question before deciding whether to proceed with a chargeback.

An RDFI, or Receiving Depository Financial Institution, is the bank of the receiver in an ACH transaction. The RDFI is where the receiver’s account is held and where funds are deposited to or debited from by the ACH network.

The sandbox is a simulation environment used to test the API and web app.

Organizations can create sub-organizations to group and manage paypoints, like value-added resellers (VARs), associations, market segments, and so on.

Tokenization is the process of exchanging sensitive data for nonsensitive data called “tokens”. You can then use these tokens in a database or internal system without bringing customer card data into your PCI scope. Payabli refers to the process of saving customer payment methods as tokenization. See Tokenization Overview for more information.

Users in Payabli have access to tools like the API, PartnerHub, or PayHub.

Vendors are businesses that are added as entities in Payable to receive payments from your paypoints.