One of the most important factors of being successful in your career is the ability to use language to your advantage.
As a sales executive, speaking to your audience is crucial to making your sale. As a lawyer, the right words can win you the lawsuit.
So what about the payments industry?
Well, in addition to the basic mastery of the English language and understanding the difference between the most rudimentary of words, having a good grasp of the payments industry vocabulary can define you as a payments professional.
The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) offers an extensive glossary of popular payments terms that is handy for anyone in the bankcard industry. At 250+ pages, this glossary isn’t light reading, but is helpful for those moments when you think, “ISO…MSP…MLS…what?”
Understanding the roles each player in the electronic payments space has is good. Being able to explain them to merchants and clients is even better!
Some of the confusing terminology:
–ETA: does not, in fact, stand for ‘estimated time of arrival’. Acronym for the Electronic Transactions Association.
–Clearing: isn’t a treeless area in the middle of the woods. Is actually the process of submitting transactions to the card companies for interchangeThe exchange of debit and credit transaction data between merchant banks and cardholder banks based on an agreement (governed by BASE II [VISA] or INET [MasterCard]) between the participants. The fees charged by the Issuer to the Acquirer. processing.
–Laundering: is not washing your clothes. Is actually a fraud scheme.
–MATCHSystem used to track merchants in order to manage risk.: not something you light a candle with. Acronym for Member Alert to Control High RiskA merchant that is considered a high risk based upon the credit, product, method, ticket size or volume. Examples of high risk merchants are telemarketing, adult and travel related industries., a Visa program used to mitigate merchantA business that accepts credit cards for goods or services. risk.
Have more questions and want to check out the extensive glossary of industry terms? Check out the ETA website, or log into your ProAgent Portal and access the full glossary in the Training section!