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Glossary

We have listed a few common terms from the payment card and ACH industry and briefly define them. If you have any additional questions, do not hesitate to contact us.

  • Automated Clearing House (ACH) - This is technically a network that connects member financial institutions for the purpose of transferring money between accounts. For example, the ACH is often used for direct deposits. Payments and donations using the ACH system are sometimes called "e-checks" and it allows donors and customers to make payments directly from their checking or savings account.
  • Acquirer (or acquiring bank) - Is a financial institution which has a relationship with both payment card companies (such as Visa or Mastercard) and merchants in order to facilitate credit card transactions. Examples include Elavon, First Data, Bank of America and Paymentech.
  • Brute Force Attack - This is a type of attack where a hacker will attempt to gain access to a system by guessing passwords until one happens to work. A hacker will typically program a computer to carry out this attack, allowing many different passwords to be tried every second.
  • Charge Back - This is when funds are forcibly returned to a donor or customer from a merchant (in accordance with Federal regulations). This can be initiated in various circumstances, such as when fraud has occurred or a product or service was not delivered as promised. 
  • Card Validation Code (CVC) - This is Master Card's name for the 3-digit code on the reverse of a credit card. It is often used as an extra step to prevent fraud in online transactions.
  • Card Verification Value (CVV2) - This is Visa's name for the 3-digit code on the reverse of a credit card. It is often used as an extra step to prevent fraud in online transactions.
  • Debit Card - This is a payment card that is normally issued by a bank and often works like a credit card except that it provides funds from a bank account instead of an established line of credit.
  • Digest - See Email Digest, below.
  • Discount Rate - This is the rate which a merchant is charged by an acquiring bank for processing transactions. This rate is multiplied by the total transaction amount when determining the fee.
  • Donor Account - This is an account that is created by a donor in order to manage their payments and donations to a particular organization.
  • E-Check - This is a common name to designate a type of payment in which a donor or customer transfers money directly from their bank account (using the Automated Clearing House system, above).
  • Email Digest - This is a report of transactions and related summary information which is periodically emailed to inform a merchant of all transactions which have occurred within a given time span. This is the alternative to a merchant receiving an email after every transaction that takes place.
  • Faith-Based Organization - This is a organization, corporation or community that primarily engages in activities and makes decisions in alignment with the collective faith or beliefs of the organization. Churches and Christian charities are two common types of faith-based organizations. 
  • Frame (or iFrame) - This is a type of webpage which is embedded into another webpage, allowing multiple webpages to be displayed on one screen. Typically only the URL or address of the main webpage is viewable.
  • Funds - These are the pre-determined designations that a donor or customer can select for their donation or payment (e.g., "Youth Group" or "General Fund").
  • Gateway - This is a server which manages electronic connections between merchants, customers and financial institutions (such as acquirers). Gateway is sometimes used to refer to the company which operates the server.
  • iFrame - See Frame, above.
  • Merchant Account - This is a special type of bank account which a merchant obtains in order to receive credit card payments.
  • Page-In-Page (PIP) - This is an implementation of iFrames (see Frame, above) in which a webpage is embedded into another, existing webpage. 
  • Recurring Transactions - These are transactions which repeat on a pre-defined schedule (e.g., every other week).
  • Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) - This is the name for the encryption that is often used by web browsers to encrypt web pages and prevent electronic eavesdropping.