Banking Terms - Set 11 (CRA, Mobile terminated SMS billing, Payment Gateway, Point to Point Encryption)

Point to Point Encryption

Point-to-point encryption ensures cardholder data is protected from card swipe all the way through to the processing banks. State of the art encrypted magnetic card readers scan and encrypt cardholder information prior to performing an electronic payment transaction.

Payment Gateway

A system of technologies and processes that allow merchants to electronically submit payment transactions to the payment processing networks. Payment Gateways help other Processors conduct secure business on the internet using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology. They provide a system that passes credit card data, authorization requests, and authorization responses over the Internet using encryption technology.

Non-Qualified Transaction Fees

Bankcard sales transactions that do not meet set Visa/MasterCard criteria for that particular merchant and are processed at a higher interchange rate. An example of this is a merchant that is retail (card present) that processes a card-not-present transaction (or manually enters card data rather than swiping the magnetic stripe). The merchant will pay the difference between what they should have paid on retail and what they actually qualified for (card not present).

Mobile terminated SMS billing

Payment method via SMS where the intended payee closes the payment by receiving one or more SMS messages. A consumer takes part in a reverse billing service by sending an SMS containing a keyword to the number (usually a four or five digit short code number) advertised in the media. This first message will be charged normally, and will signal the start of the reverse billing service. The user will then receive the reverse billed message at intervals specified in the advertised material.

CRA [Credit Rating Agency]

An organization licensed under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 that holds information about the borrowing habits of people. Financial institutions may contact these agencies for information to help them make various decisions, for example, whether or not to open an account or provide loans or grant credit. Financial institutions share information with the agencies to improve the overall quality of lending decisions.