Glossary

This page provides a glossary of terms and abbreviations used in Maast developer documents.

• ABA - American Bankers Association number: Also known as an ABA routing number. The number used to identify a federal or state chartered financial institution that is eligible for a Federal Reserve Bank account.

• ACH - Automated Clearing House: A network that coordinates electronic payments and automated money transfers. ACH is a way to move money between banks without using paper checks, wire transfers, credit card networks, or cash.

• Address Verification Service - See "AVS."

• AML - Anti money laundering: The web of procedures, regulations, and laws intended to uncover efforts to disguise illicit funds as legitimate income.

• ARC - Accounts Receivable Entry: A converted consumer check received in the mail or at a dropbox location to a single-entry ACH Debit for the payment of goods or services.

• Authorization - A transaction type that sends cardholder data to the issuing bank for approval.

  • The transaction remains as a hold until a capture message is received or the hold expires.
  • Authorizations are automatically voided if they are not captured within 28 days.
  • Most issuing banks release the hold after 24 hours in retail environments or 7 days in 'card not present' environments.

• Automated Clearing House - See "ACH."

• Automated Enrollment Entry - See "ENR."

• AVS - Address Verification Service: A tool that credit card processors and issuing banks use to detect fraud.

• Batch Close - A transaction type that immediately closes the open batch of transactions.

  • POS devices normally use this to control the timing of a batch close instead of relying on the daily automatic batch close.

• Capture - A transaction type that captures an authorized transaction.

  • Capture uses the Payment Gateway identifier returned by the authorization message.
  • You may complete a capture for any amount up to the authorized amount.

• CID - Card identification number.

• CIE - Customer-Initiated Entry: An entry class code that enables a consumer to initiate an ACH credit into the ACH network to transfer funds to a company for a payment owed to that company. CIE entries are limited to credit applications.

• CNP - Card Not Present: A payment card transaction that takes place when the card is not physically present for the merchant to inspect.

• CVM - Cardholder Verification Method: For an EMV chip transaction, this is used to check whether the person using the payment card is the legitimate cardholder. The method may be a Personal Identification Number (PIN) or a signature.

• Credit - A transaction type that issues a non-referenced credit or payment to a cardholder.

  • The credit message is enabled during the first 30 days of production activity. After 30 days, it is disabled to prevent fraudulent use.

• DBA - Doing Business As: A legal alias that an institution or individual may use for business operations.

• DDA - Direct Deposit Account

• Destroyed Check Entry - See "XCK."

• DFI - Depository Financial Institution: The ACH payment recipient's bank.

• EFT - Electronic Funds Transfer

• EMV - An EMV chip is an embedded microprocessor chip used to store and protect cardholder data in EMV payment cards. EMV stands for "Europay, Mastercard, and Visa," the companies that created the standard.

• ENR - Automated Enrollment Entry: A non-dollar entry sent through the ACH by any RDFI to a U.S. Federal Government agency participating in the ENR program.

• FBO account - For-Benefit-Of account: A fiduciary account that allows a company to manage funds "for the benefit of" one or more of its users without assuming ownership interest in the account.

• For-Benefit-Of - See "FBO account"

• Force - A transaction type that forces a declined transaction into the system.

  • Use this transaction type when an online authorization has been declined and you have received an authorization from a voice or automated response (ARU) system.
  • The required fields for a Force message are the same as for a Sale or Authorization message, with these exceptions: the cardholder expiration date (exp_date) is not required, and the 6-character authorization code from the issuer (auth_code) is required.

• IAT - International ACH Transaction: See ACH.

• Invoice ID - See "Purchase ID."

• ISV - Independent Software Vendor. An ISV is the typical user of Maast Partner accounts, Aggregated Payments, and Application Boarding and Integrator API resources.

• LBX - Lockbox: A service that banks provide to companies to receive payment from customers. Payments are directed to a special post office box instead of the company. The bank retrieves and processes the payments and deposits the funds directly into the company's bank account.

• MCC - Merchant category code: A four-digit number that a credit card issuer uses to categorize transactions made with a specific card.

• Merchant category code - See "MCC."

• Merchant plug-in - See "MPI."

• MICR - Magnetic ink character recognition: The string of characters used to identify a check, consisting of the bank routing number, the customer's account number, and the check number.

• MOTO - Mail Order/Telephone Order: A payment taken over the phone or by mail, email, or fax. It is a type of card-not-present (CNP) transaction.

• MPI - Merchant plug-in: A software module designed to facilitate 3-D Secure verification to prevent payment card fraud.

• MTE - Machine Transfer Entry: An entry initiated at an electronic terminal such as an automated teller machine (ATM). This entry can either be a debit or a credit.

• ODFI - Originating Depository Financial Institution: An institution that acts as the interface between the Federal Reserve or ACH network and the originator of an ACH transaction.

• Originating Depository Financial Institution - See "ODFI."

• Payment Gateway ID - A unique identifier assigned to a transaction.

  • This value is only available when processing through Maast Virtual Terminal, Payment Gateway, Hosted Checkout, Recurring Billing, and Invoicing.

• PIN - Personal identification number: A number used to validate identity.

• PIN Verification Value - See "PVV."

• POS - Point of sale.

• Purchase ID - Sometimes referred to as the invoice ID. This is a unique identifier for a transaction that you input at the time of transaction processing. The value can be system-generated when Recurring Billing or Invoicing initiates the transaction.

  • The value may appear on the cardholder's statement, and it can be used for reconciliation purposes.
  • The value is available for third-party Payment Gateway processing when the transaction is settled.

• PVV - PIN Verification Value: A number that enables the issuer to validate the cardholder identity in combination with the personal identification number (PIN) and cardholder account number.

• RCK - Represented Check Entry: A debit based on a paper check payment that has been presented and returned for Non-Sufficient Funds or Uncollected Funds. RCK is utilized for representment of the payment via the ACH Network.

• RDFI - Receiving Depository Financial Institution: A financial institution qualified to receive ACH entries.

• Receiving Depository Financial Institution - See "RDFI."

• Represented Check Entry - See "RCK."

• Refund - A transaction type that issues a full or partial refund to a captured transaction.

  • Refund uses the Payment Gateway identifier from the captured transaction.
  • You can make multiple partial refunds of the same captured transaction, as long as the refunds do not sum to more than the original captured transaction amount.

• Sale - A transaction type that authorizes and captures payment in a single message. Use this when goods or services are fulfilled at the time of payment, or for ACH payments.

• Stand-In Processing - See "STIP."

• STIP - Stand-In Processing: A back-up process for Authorization performed by the card network when connectivity with the card issuer is down.

• Tokenize - A transaction type that adds credit card or ACH payment method information to an existing card ID or creates a new card ID with tokenized payment method information.

• Unlinked credit - A credit that is not linked to a previous charge transaction processed through the payment gateway.

• Verify - A transaction type that sends cardholder data to the issuing bank for verification. Fees may apply.

• Void - A transaction type that cancels an authorized transaction.

  • You can void authorizations at any time until Maast automatically voids them at 28 days.
  • You can capture authorized transactions until the batch is closed.
  • You can void captured transactions until the batch is closed.
  • The default batch close time is 9 PM PST (US), but you can configure it to any time.
  • If your batch closes and you did not void the transaction in time, you may make a Refund request.

• XCK - Destroyed Check Entry: This application can be utilized by a collecting institution for the collection of certain checks when those checks have been destroyed.