Acquiring Bank:
The bank that verifies the credit cards of the cutomers on behalf of the merchant and deposits the required amount into merchant’s account after final settlement is known as acquiring bank.

Application Service Provider (ASP):
An organisation that provides software based services and solutions to customers accross a wide area network from a central data center.

Authorization:
The act of giving insurance that the cardholder has adequate funds in his account against the line of credit. If found enough amount, the authorization code is generated. The cardholder’s credit limit is hence reduced by the authorized amount. This whole process is known as Authorization.

Batch:
A group of captured transactions waiting in a queue to be settled.

Brick & Mortar:
Brick & Mortar is a sort of business in which customers are dealt in a face to face environment like dealing a customer in one’s own office.

Browser:
An application software to locate and display world wide web pages through net.

B2B:
B2B is a commercial transaction beween two or more businesses.

B2C:
B2C is selling of goods and services to a customer and the transaction takes place through internet.

Card-Present Transaction:
A Card-present transaction is actually a face to face transaction, in which the buyer himself presents his credit card to the merchant in order to pay for the purchases.The interchange rate is low in this case since the buyer is physically present for the transaction.

Card-Not-Present Transaction:
A card-not-present transaction is the one in which the buyer gives only his credit card number to the merchant. There is highest interchange rate due to high risk factor in this case, since the buyer is physically not present during the transactions.

Card Holder:
A credit card account holder and making purchases using a credit card.

Cookie:
An information that is stored by the server on the hard disk of a client for its future use is known as cookie. Internet explorer stores each cookie as a separate file under windows subdirectory. Netscape stores cookies in a single cookies.txt file, opera stores them in single cookies.dat file.

Cryptography:
Cryptography is a technique to mathematically code the information that is passed through public networks so that it is unreadable to anyone. These codes can only be read by the person who holds the mathematical key to decode the information. Cryptography is mainly used for security purposes.

Data Capture:
Data capture is an electronic means to collect merchant bank card sales receipt from the merchant’s point-of-sale terminal or electronic cash register.

Digital Certificate:
A digital certificate, issued by a certification authority, is an attachment to an electronic message generally used for security purposes. It contains name, serial number, expiration dates, a copy of certificate holder’s public key and the digital signature of the certificate issuing authority. Digital certificate is commonly used to verify the authenticity of the user.

Discount Rate:
Discount rate is the fees which a merchant pays its acquiring bank or merchant bank in order to obtain right to deposit the value of each day’s credit purchases. This fees is generally a small percentage of the purchase value.

Disintermediation:
Disintermediation is a term used to describe the functioning of many internet based businesses that use the world wide web to deal with their customers directly.This process helps the companies to sell and buy their products much cheaper and faster.

Domain Name:
An internet address of an organization is known as domain name of that organization.

E-Banking:
E-banking is a form of banking that provides an individual, the authority to access personal or business banking services over a public network such as the Internet. It usually allows 24 hour access to banking services. It involves less paper work and more of computer and electronic technology.

E-Commerce:
E-commerce is a process of buying and selling goods and services on the Internet.

E-Merchant:
A trader that uses internet to expand and promote his business.

E-Payment:
E-payment is a method in which a person can make online payments for his purchases without physical transfer of cash or documents, irrespective of time or location. This method includes credit cards, debit cards, smart cards etc.

Encryption:
A coded information which can only be read by the person having the right type of decoding software or key to decrypt the message.

Electronic Software Distribution(ESD):
Electronic Software Distribution is a system for selling software over a network, it provides secure communications that customers use to download and pay for software. They can operate over the internet or on a direct modem to modem connection.

Firewall:
A firewall is a system designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network, generally access from internet into a private network.

Hosting:
Internet Service Provider stores some websites on a server. This process is known as hosting.

HTTPS:
A protocol developed by netscape that encrypts and decrypts user page requests that are returned by the web server.

IP Address:
IP address is a 32 bit numeric address written in four numbers separated by periods generally to indicate the destination address.These numbers can be from 0 to 255.

Issuing Bank:
The bank that issues credit card to its customer is known as an issuing bank.

Internet Service Provider(ISP):
Internet service provider is an organization that provides internet services such as web site hosting, web development etc.

Key:
A password needed to decode the encrypted data.

Mail Order/Telephone Order:
Mail order or telephone order is a transaction where order and payment information is passed on to the merchant either through mail or telephone.

Merchant:
The merchant is a party that provides goods and services to its customers in exchange of payment.

Merchant Bank:
The bank that enables its merchants to accept credit card payments from its customers. A merchant must have an account with this bank.

Payment Gateways:
A payment gateway is a software program which is integarted to a merchant’s website for facilitating transmission of transaction data to the credit card or pre-paid cash card or net banking acquirers or mobile payments for settlement of payments. This enables the merchants to perform real-time credit card authorizations from a website through Internet. After the gateway obtians authorization from credit card institutions, the customers can do the required payments across the internet within a few seconds.

Payment Switch:
The payment switch provides a path to the payment card transaction data for approval, processing and settling electronic payment transactions. They are sent to the respective financial institutions.

Personal Identification Number (PIN):
Personal Identification Number is a password which is to be provided by the card holders in order to use the card facility. This number must be entered along with a payment card number for processing various transactions.

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI):
A system of digital certificates, certificate authorities and other registration authorities that verify the validity of each party involved in an Internet transaction.

Point-Of-Sale(POS):
A place where a merchant deals face to face with its clients.

Plug-In:
A software module designed to operate the existing software application.

Recurring Payments:
Recurring payment is a kind of transaction which allows merchant to run multiple authorizations for the same buyer, it can be multiple payments for a fixed amount or repeated billings.

Shopping Cart:
Shopping cart is a software which handles online store’s catalog and orders. It allows a customer to select goods from a web page, review the selected items, make addition or deletion and purchase the goods accordingly.

Stored Value Card:
A card that contains a computer chip or magnetic strip to store or debit money electronically.

TCP/IP:
Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol is a set of communication protocol used to connect hosts on the Internet. This set uses several protocols, generally TCP and IP.

Uniform Resource Locator(URL):
It is a global address of documents and other resources on the world wide web. The first part of the address specifies the protocol to be used and the second part indicates the IP address where the resource is located.

WWW:
WWW is a systen of inter connected Internet servers that supports specially formatted documents. These documents are formatted in HTML, and provide links to other documents as well as graphics, audio, video files.