Rvvup | Glossary

Glossary

Fintech and Payments language demystified; helping you navigate the world of payments.

A B C d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

ACV

Annual Contract Value — The amount of money a customer pays you in a year.

API

An Application Programming Interface is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. An API specifies how software components should interact.

API Data

API Data is data made available to an API User or a TPP through the APIs.

APaaS

Application Platform-as-a-Service — A platform allowing customers to build their own SaaS applications on top of a PaaS, often without coding knowledge e.g. SalesForce.

ASPSP

Account Servicing Payment Service Providers provide and maintain a payment account for a payer as defined by the PSRs and, in the context of the Open Banking Ecosystem are entities that publish Read/Write APIs to permit, with customer consent, payments initiated by third party providers and/or make their customers’ account transaction data available to third party providers via their API end points.

Account Information Service Provider (AISP)

A third-party provider that accesses and aggregates financial data from a customer's various bank accounts and presents it to the customer in a single view.

Account Verification Service Provider (AVSP)

A third-party provider that verifies the identity of a customer or business during account opening or other financial transactions.

Altcoin

Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin.

BERT

Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers

BIAN

Banking Industry Architecture Network — A banking standards body launched by several global banks in 2008.

BNPL

Buy Now Pay Later

BaaS

Banking-as-a-Service — Bundled offerings, often white-labeled or co-branded services, that non-banks can use to serve their customers.

Bank-as-a-Platform (BaaP)

A model in which banks offer APIs to third-party developers, allowing them to create and sell their own financial services using the bank's infrastructure.

Block

The set of transactions to be applied to the blockchain state in a certain order.

Blockchain

A decentralized, distributed ledger that records transactions across many computers in such a way that the ledger cannot be altered retroactively.

Blockchain Node

A node is the software running on a computer in the network, which communicates with other nodes in order to acquire the transactions and blocks and applies them to its state, thereby maintaining the copy of the latest blockchain state.

CVV

Card Verification Value — The code on a payment card in addition to the standard account number used as an extra layer of security.

Cube

An alternative to pillars for visualising the functional areas, as they are interconnected and have a data management layer across all of them.

Customers

Businesses that integrate and use Rvvup's platform.

Cryptographic Signatures

A mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents.

CoF

Card on File

Cryptocurrency

A digital currency that uses encryption techniques to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds.

Consent Management

The process of obtaining and managing a customer's consent for third-party providers to access their financial data and initiate payments.

Container

Refers to a standardized software package that wraps code with all its dependencies. Containerization improves software modularity and interoperability by allowing applications to run reliably across different computing environments.

CMA9

The CMA9 are the nine largest banks in the UK, as determined by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) as part of the Open Banking initiative.

CMA

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is a non-ministerial government department in the United Kingdom, responsible for strengthening business competition and preventing and reducing anti-competitive activities.

CBPII

A Card Based Payment Instrument Issuer is a payment services provider that issues card-based payment instruments that can be used to initiate a payment transaction from a payment account held with another payment service provider.

CeFi

Centralised Finance

Centralized

A system that is controlled by a central authority or middleman.

CBDC

A central bank digital currency (CBDC) uses an electronic record or digital token to represent the virtual form of a fiat currency of a particular nation (or region). A CBDC is centralized; it is issued and regulated by the competent monetary authority of the country.

DAO

A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is an entity with no central leadership. Decisions get made from the bottom-up, governed by a community organized around a specific set of rules enforced on a blockchain.

DPAN

Device Primary Account Number also known as the "Digital" Primary Account Number) — The "network token" generated by the Payment Network or [issuing bank] that identifies the Provisioned Card that is associated with a Cardholder's FPAN and used by [issuing bank] to identify the same Card and Account on which to Charge purchase transactions or other transactions using an Enabled Device.

DNVB

digitally native vertical brand

DeFi

Decentralised Finance

DLT

Distributed Ledger Technology.

Direct Debit

An instruction given by a customer to their bank to allow a third party to collect payments from their account on a regular basis.

Decentralized

A system that operates without a central authority or middleman.

DAG

Directed Acyclic Graph — A type of data model.

DAN

Device Account Number — An additional descriptor used in many digital wallets like Apple Pay for device authentication.

Data Recipient

A third-party provider that receives and uses financial data from an AISP or PISP.

DBA

Doing Business As

Data Aggregator

A company that collects and aggregates data from multiple sources, including financial data, and presents it to customers in a unified view.

ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning — Software that offers a set of tools that share a common process and data model, covering end-to-end operational processes, such as accounting, analytics, inventory management, customer relationship management (CRM), and human resources (HR) management (eg SAP, Oracle, Xentral and a host of others).

EiPaaS

Enterprise integration Platform-as-a-Service — Like iPaaS but specifically targeted towards larger enterprise customers.

Eligibility Criteria

Factors used to determine whether a person is eligible (inclusion criteria) to participate in a purchase of trade or trade, such as nationality, residency, risk score, KYC checks etc. Anyone who fails to meet the criteria is automatically ineligible.

Electronic Funds (EFT)

A transfer of funds between bank accounts that is initiated and processed electronically.

Embedded Finance

Integration of financial services into products and business processes of non-banks. Banking-like services offered by nonbanks. E.g. An online store like Amazon or similar offers Buy Now, Pay Later option that converts the cost of a purchase into an automatic loan from the online store itself instead of a third-party lending institution.

End Customers

The customers of our customers i.e the business customers (could be other businesses B2B or could be consumers B2C).

EA Pros

Enterprise Architecture Professionals.

Fork

A change in the software of a cryptocurrency that creates two separate versions of the blockchain.

FPAN

Funding Primary Account Number — The number of the actual Account appearing on the physical Card (or similar device) issued by [issuing bank].

Financial Data Exchange (FDX)

A US-based consortium of financial institutions, fintechs, and other companies working together to create an interoperable open banking ecosystem in the US.

FCA

The Financial Conduct Authority is the conduct regulator for 56,000 financial services firms and financial markets in the UK and the prudential regulator for over 18,000 of those firms.

FedNow

Fully implemented by 2023, will let individuals and companies transfer funds between accounts, pay bills and send or receive money from friends or family. The services will be near-real time and be available any day or time of the year.

Fiat Currency

A government-issued currency that is not backed by a physical commodity, such as gold or silver.

Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)

Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)The UK regulatory body responsible for overseeing and regulating the financial services industry, including open banking.

GDPR

General Data Protection Regulation — A regulation by which the European Parliament, the European Council and the European Commission intend to strengthen and unify data protection for individuals within the European Union (EU).

Gas (Ethereum)

Gas refers to the fee, or pricing value, required to successfully conduct a transaction or execute a contract on the Ethereum blockchain platform. Priced in small fractions of the cryptocurrency ether (ETH), commonly referred to as gwei and sometimes also called nanoeth, the gas is used to allocate resources of the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) so that decentralized applications such as smart contracts can self-execute in a secured but decentralized fashion.

G3P

3rd Generation Payments Platform.

HIP

Hybrid Integration Platforms.

High touch SaaS

SaaS model which requires an extensive sales or customer onboarding process to be delivered to customers.

Hashrate

The speed at which a mining computer can solve the mathematical problems necessary to validate transactions on the blockchain.

iPaaS

Integration Platform-as-a-Service — Gartner: A suite of cloud services enabling development, execution and governance of integration flows connecting any combination of on premises and cloud-based processes, services, applications and data within individual or across multiple organizations. ie a way of orchestrating various SaaS services to talk to each other to manage the operations of a business.

IaaS

Infrastructure-as-a-Service — Cloud providers like Amazon AWS, Azure, GCS etc.

ICO (Initial Coin Offering)

A fundraising method in which a company issues tokens in exchange for cryptocurrency.

i18n

Internationalisation — Designing and developing a software product to function in multiple locales

Invoice

A bill that lists the goods or services provided and their prices, issued by a seller to a buyer.

Low touch SaaS

SaaS model which requires minimal or no human interaction required throughout the customer journey

LSTM

Stands for long short-term memory networks, used in the field of Deep Learning. It is a variety of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) that are capable of learning long-term dependencies, especially in sequence prediction problems.

L10n

Localisation — Modifying or adapting a software product to fit the requirements of a particular locale

MOR

Merchant of Record

MCC

Merchant Category Code — Describes the business activities of a merchant and is typically used in the Card Industry.

Mining

The process of verifying transactions and adding them to the blockchain by solving complex mathematical problems.

MACH

Microservices, APIs, Cloud-based, Headless

Mobile Payment

A payment made using a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet.

Merchant Account

A type of bank account that allows businesses to accept and process credit and debit card payments.

Open Banking Standard

The set of technical and security standards developed by the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) in the UK to govern open banking APIs.

Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE)

The UK entity responsible for developing and implementing the Open Banking Standard.

Open Finance

An extension of open banking that includes access to non-banking financial data, such as insurance and investment accounts.

Open Banking

The practice of allowing third-party providers to access and use financial data from banks and other financial institutions through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

Open Banking Nigeria

A Nigerian initiative aimed at increasing financial inclusion by enabling the sharing of financial data and services between banks, fintechs, and other financial institutions.

Open Banking Ecosystem

The Open Banking Ecosystem refers to all the elements that facilitate the operation of Open Banking. This includes the API Standards, the governance, systems, processes, security and procedures used to support participants.

Open API

An Open API or Public API is a free-to-use, publicly available application programming interface (API) that provides developers with programmatic access to a proprietary software application.

On-Ramp

A cryptocurrency on-ramp refers to an exchange or similar service where you can offer fiat money in return for cryptocurrency.

Off-Chain

Off-chain transactions refer to those transactions not occurring on a network that move the value outside of the blockchain.

Off-Ramp

Cryptocurrency off-ramps act as just the opposite of on-ramps. They are a way to convert your cryptocurrency into fiat, or possibly products and services.

On-Chain

On-chain transactions refer to those transactions that occur on the blockchain.

OAuth

An authorization framework that allows a user to grant third-party access to their resources, without sharing their credentials.

Public Key

A public code that allows other people to send cryptocurrency to you.

PSP

A Payment Services Provider is an entity which carries out regulated payment services, including AISPs, PISPs, CBPIIs and ASPSPs.

Proof of Work (PoW)

A consensus mechanism used by many cryptocurrencies that requires miners to solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions.

Proof of Stake (PoS)

A consensus mechanism used by some cryptocurrencies that allows users to validate transactions based on the amount of cryptocurrency they hold.

Prepaid Card

A card that is loaded with funds in advance and can be used to make purchases or withdraw cash.

Private Key

A secret code that allows you to access your cryptocurrency and make transactions.

POP

Payments Orchestration Platform (e.g Primer & GR4VY) — Similar to our TOP but focusing on Payments / Fraud only.

Point of Sale (POS)

A system used by retailers to manage sales transactions, inventory, and customer data.

PISP

A Payment Initiation Services Provider provides an online service to initiate a payment order at the request of the payment service user with respect to a payment account held at another payment service provider.

Peer-to-peer Computing/Networking

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged participants in the application.

Pillars

Core functional areas of businesses we deem key to operating.

Peer-to-Peer (P2P)

A network in which computers communicate directly with each other without the need for a central server.

PayPal

An online payment system that allows users to send and receive payments electronically.

Payment Terminal

A device used to accept payment from a customer, such as a credit card machine.

Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2)

A European Union directive that requires banks to provide third-party providers with access to customer account data and payment initiation services, with the customer's consent.

Payment Processor

A company that processes payment transactions on behalf of merchants.

Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP)

A third-party provider that initiates payments on behalf of a customer, with the customer's consent, using APIs to access their bank account.

Payment

The transfer of funds from one party to another in exchange for goods or services.

Partners

The 3rd party service providers we choose that will be connected to Rvvup and accessible by the customer.

PaaS

Platform-as-a-Service — Often used to describe development platforms for SaaS products like Heroku, AWS lambdas, etc.

PAN

Primary Account Number — The number embossed on a debit or credit card.

Payment Gateway

An online service that authorises and processes credit card and other electronic payment transactions.

PaaS

Payments-as-a-Service — Payments functions such as on-demand tokenization, routing, and stand-ins are codified as separate functions, assembled and extended in Lego-like fashion to offer superior customer and cardholder experience.

Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS)

Standards set by the European Banking Authority (EBA) that govern the security and technical requirements for open banking APIs.

Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2)

The Payment Services Directive 2015/2366, as amended or updated from time to time and including the associated Regulatory Technical Standards developed by the EBA and agreed by the European Commission and as implemented by the PSR and including any formal guidance issued by a Competent Authority.

RNN

Recurrent Neural Network — A class of artificial networks in which hyper-parameters (or nodes) are part of a directed graph and connected along a temporal sequence. Often used to decode time-series data, given their proficiency in identifying hidden patterns; for example, revealing pattern similarities to flag potentially fraudulent activity not yet defined in existing rules, or highlighting behavior indicating likely account churn.

Stablecoin

Cryptocurrencies designed to minimize price volatility relative to a selected "stable" asset or basket of assets. A stablecoin can be pegged to a cryptocurrency, fiat money, or exchange-traded commodities.

Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)

A security measure that requires customers to provide multiple forms of identification before accessing their financial accounts or making transactions.

SOM

Serviceable Obtainable Market — The portion of SAM that you can capture.

SOC

Share of Checkout

SMEs

Small and medium-sized enterprises by scale of business, as defined by the CMA, with a turnover <£6.5m p.a.

SIEM

Security information and event management

SMEs

Subject Matter Experts

Smart Contract

A smart contract is a self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code. The code and the agreements contained therein exist across a distributed, decentralized blockchain network. The code controls the execution, and transactions are trackable and irreversible and therefore transparent.

SAM

Serviceable Available Market — The segment of the TAM targeted by your products and services which is within your geographical reach.

SIC

Standard industrial classification

SaaS

Software-as-a-Service — Software applications or functionality delivered over the web, usually for a monthly fee.

Trading Pair (Crypto)

Two assets that you can trade for each other on an exchange. A crypto pair combines a cryptocurrency with another cryptocurrency or fiat currency.

TOP

Technology Orchestration Platform (Rvvup) — A new specialisation we are creating within the iPaaS space. An aggregated selection of SaaS services delivered to allow a customer to access a range of connected SaaS services covering Payments, Fraud, Reconciliation and eventually Sales, Marketing, Support with one integration point, and see key management metrics via a high level management interface.

Third Party Provider

Organisations or natural persons that use APIs developed to Standards to access customer’s accounts, in order to provide account information services and/or to initiate payments. Third Party Providers are either/both Payment Initiation Service Providers (PISPs) and/or Account Information Service Providers (AISPs).

Token

A digital asset that represents a unit of value on a blockchain.

Transaction Fee

A fee paid by users to miners to prioritize their transactions on the blockchain.

TAM

Total Addressable Market Typically used to reference the revenue opportunity available for a product or service.

Validators

A special subset of blockchain nodes that have the right to propose new blocks. Validators follow a set of rules (consensus protocol) to agree on accepting or rejecting the proposed block. Only accepted blocks are applied to the blockchain state, resulting in the blockchain state transitioning to its next version in steps (blocks).

VRPs

Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs) let customers safely connect authorised payments providers to their bank account so that they can make payments on the customer’s behalf, in line with agreed limits. VRPs offer more control and transparency than existing alternatives, such as Direct Debit payments.

VASP

Virtual Asset Service Provider

Virtual Terminal

An online payment processing system that allows merchants to accept payments over the internet without the need for a physical payment terminal.

Wallet

A digital wallet that stores your cryptocurrency and allows you to send and receive payments.

Wire Transfer

A transfer of funds from one bank account to another using a network of banks or financial institutions.