Payment Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the payment terms you meet when choosing or running a payment infrastructure — from virtual POS and 3D Secure to payment orchestration and smart routing.
3D Secure
3D Secure is a security protocol in which the card-issuing bank verifies the cardholder's identity during an online card payment.
Chargeback
A chargeback is the reversal of a payment from the merchant after the cardholder disputes the transaction through their own bank.
On-us and Not-on-us Transactions
An on-us transaction is one where the card-issuing bank and the bank of the virtual POS processing the transaction are the same — for example, a Bank X card charged through a Bank X virtual POS.
Payment Failover
Payment failover is the automatic transfer of a transaction to an alternative channel when the bank or payment channel selected for it is unreachable, times out or returns a technical error.
Payment Gateway
A payment gateway is the technical infrastructure that securely captures card details in an online purchase, passes them to the relevant bank's virtual POS system and returns the bank's approval or...
Payment Institution
A payment institution is a non-bank company licensed to provide payment services.
Payment Orchestration
Payment orchestration is a technology layer that lets a business manage multiple bank virtual POS accounts and payment service providers through a single integration and a single dashboard.
Payment Reconciliation
Payment reconciliation is the process of matching a business's own sales and collection records, one by one, against transaction reports, account statements and settled amounts from banks and payment providers.
PCI DSS
PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is the international data security standard that every organisation processing, transmitting or storing card data must follow.
Smart Routing
Smart routing is a rules-based mechanism that automatically sends each payment to the most suitable of a business's virtual POS accounts and payment providers, based on criteria such as commission...
Split Payment
Split payment is the automatic division of a single customer payment among multiple recipients.
Tokenization (Card Storage)
Tokenization replaces sensitive payment data such as a card number with a unique reference value (a token) that has no value on its own.
Virtual POS
A virtual POS is a merchant account that a bank assigns to a business so it can accept card payments online.