Glossary
Plain-English payment terminology.
Edit, expand or reorganise every definition directly in Elementor.
Built to make payment decisions clearer
Independent
Plain-English explanations without a sales pitch.
Practical
Questions, frameworks and cost thinking you can actually use.
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Merchant Atlas
Plain English for payment terminology
Use the glossary as a reference while reading market guides, provider research and pricing pages.
A–Z
Core terms
Acquirer
The institution or acquiring provider that enables a merchant to accept card payments.
Authorisation
The process used to approve or decline a payment request.
Chargeback
A transaction reversal initiated through a card dispute process.
Effective rate
Total processing-related cost divided by processed payment volume.
Gateway
Technology connecting a digital checkout or system to payment processing.
Interchange
A component of card-payment economics associated with issuer compensation under network rules.
MCC
Merchant Category Code used to classify a merchant’s business activity.
Settlement
The movement of processed payment funds to the merchant under the provider arrangement.
Tokenisation
Replacing sensitive credentials with a substitute token for supported use cases.
See the terms in context.
Work through Merchant Services 101 for a connected explanation of the payment flow.