A
- ACH
- The Automated Clearing House network, used in the US for bank-to-bank debits and credits. Common for B2B wholesale, vendor and subscription payments.
- Acquirer
- The bank or licensed institution that holds a merchant account and takes on the risk of the merchant's card transactions.
- AML
- Anti-money laundering: the program of controls, monitoring and reporting a financial institution maintains to detect and report suspicious activity.
- ATM (cashless)
- A workaround that ran retail card purchases as ATM-style withdrawals. Widely treated as network non-compliant and a common cause of terminations.
- Authorization
- The issuer's approval of a card transaction amount before it is captured and settled.
B
- BSA
- The Bank Secrecy Act, the US framework requiring financial institutions to keep records and file reports such as SARs and CTRs.
C
- Chargeback
- A cardholder dispute that reverses a settled transaction. Debit-rail B2B payments have different dispute mechanics than credit card sales.
- Compliance program
- Documented policies and procedures — KYC, monitoring, reporting, training — that a provider reviews during B2B underwriting.
- CTR
- Currency Transaction Report, filed by financial institutions for qualifying cash transactions above the reporting threshold.
D
- Discount rate
- The percentage a processor charges on transaction volume, separate from per-item and monthly fees.
E
- Escheatment
- The process by which unclaimed funds are turned over to a state. Occasionally relevant to long-held merchant balances.
F
- FinCEN
- The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the US Treasury. Its 2014 guidance describes expectations for banks serving wholesale-related businesses.
H
- High risk
- A processor's internal classification for merchant categories with elevated legal, regulatory, reputational or loss risk. It affects pricing, reserves and monitoring.
I
- Interchange
- The fee set by card networks and paid to the card-issuing bank on a card transaction.
- ISO
- Independent Sales Organization: a company that sells and services merchant accounts on behalf of an acquiring bank.
K
- KYC
- Know Your Customer: verifying the identity, ownership and licensing of a business and its beneficial owners.
M
- MATCH list
- A card-network-maintained list of merchants terminated for cause. Being listed makes new card acceptance materially harder.
- MCC
- Merchant Category Code, the four-digit code describing a merchant's business type to the card networks.
- Metrc
- A seed-to-sale traceability system used by many state B2B programs. It tracks inventory, not payments, but POS and payment data must reconcile with it.
- MRB
- Wholesale-related business, the term banks use for direct-invoice-based and ancillary B2B businesses.
P
- Payment facilitator
- A provider that boards sub-merchants under its own master account. Most mainstream payfacs prohibit invoice-based B2B.
- PCI DSS
- The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, which applies to any environment that stores, processes or transmits cardholder data.
- PIN debit
- A debit transaction authenticated with a PIN and routed over debit networks rather than credit card networks.
R
- Reserve
- Funds a provider holds back — as a rolling percentage, a fixed amount or an upfront deposit — to cover potential losses.
- Return (ACH)
- An ACH entry sent back unpaid, for example for insufficient funds or an unauthorized debit. High return rates threaten ACH access.
S
- SAFE/SAFER Banking Act
- Proposed federal legislation intended to protect financial institutions serving state-legal B2B businesses. Check current status before relying on it.
- SAR
- Suspicious Activity Report. FinCEN guidance describes wholesale-specific SAR filings banks use when serving these customers.
- Settlement
- The movement of funds from the acquirer or provider into the merchant's bank account after transactions are captured.
- Sponsor bank
- The regulated institution whose risk appetite ultimately determines whether a B2B merchant can be boarded and stay boarded.
- Surcharge
- A fee added to a customer's transaction to offset acceptance cost. Legality and network rules vary by state and payment type.
U
- Underwriting
- The review of licensing, ownership, financials, compliance and risk that determines whether an account is approved and on what terms.