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Card Knowledge Glossary

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P Q R | S T U | V W X | Y Z

P

Paper Draft

Sales slips, credit slips, cash disbursement slips, drafts, vouchers, and other obligations indicating use of a card or a card account.

Password

A sequence of characters which allows users access to a system. Although they are supposed to be unique, experience has shown that most people?s choices are highly insecure. Humans tend to choose short words such as names, which are easy to guess.

Pcard

Pcard is an abbreviation for Purchasing Card, Purchase Card, Procurement Card, or Purchasing Card.

P-Card

Pcard is an abbreviation for Purchasing Card, Purchase Card, Procurement Card, or Purchasing Card.

Per Transaction Fees

Fees paid by the merchant to the merchant bank or other contracted party on a per transaction basis.

PIN

Personal Identification Number - A sequence of digits used to verify the identity of the holder of a token. It is a kind of password.

PKI

Public Key Infrastructure - The total system used in verifying, enrolling and certifying users of a security application.

Plaintext

Data before the application of a cryptographic algorithm

Plastic (Card)

This is a generic term used to identify any of the various cards issued to cardholders.

Point Of Sale (POS)

Location in a merchant establishment at which the sale is consummated by payment for goods or services received.

Policy

An informal, generally natural language description of desired system behavior. Policies may be defined for particular requirements, such as confidentiality, integrity, availability, safety etc.

POS System

A system that processes commercial transactions such as a credit card terminal, electronic cash register, or specialized software.

Posting

The process of updating individual cardholder account balances to reflect merchandise sales, instant cash, cash advances, adjustments, payments, and any other charges or credits.

Presentment

A clearing record that an acquirer presents to an issuer through interchange, either initially (a first presentment) or after a chargeback (a re-presentment).

Primary Account Number (PAN)

The number that is embossed, encoded, or both, on a plastic card that identifies the issuer and the particular cardholder account.

Prime Vendor

Prime vendor is a general term used in procurement to describe an important supplier. In some cases, such as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), it also connotes a certain way of doing business with said supplier.

Prior Authorization

An authorization usually done before a transaction takes place. The approved authorization request may be held for an extended length of time before a card is present or not.

Private Key

A cryptographic key known only to the user, employed in public key cryptography in decrypting or signing information.

Procard

Procard (lowercase) is used by some organizations as an abbreviation for Procurement Card. ProCard (uppercase) is the name of a company that provides software and services to some issuing banks.

Processing Date

The date on which the transaction is processed by the acquiring bank.

Procurement Card

Procurement Card(s) (or purchase cards / purchasing cards) are one type of corporate/commercial card. They are typically issued to individuals that have the authority to make purchases on behalf of their organization; expenses are centrally billed to the cardholder's organization.

Public Key

A cryptographic key which is used for data encryption and which cannot be used for decryption. Public keys can be freely published.

Public Key Cryptography

A form of asymmetric encryption where all parties possess a pair of keys, one private and one public, for use in encryption and digital signing of data.

Purchase Card

Purchase Card(s) (or procurement cards / purchasing cards) are one type of corporate/commercial card. They are typically issued to individuals that have the authority to make purchases on behalf of their organization; expenses are centrally billed to the cardholder's organization.

Purchasing Card

Purchasing Card(s) (or purchase cards / procurement cards) are one type of corporate/commercial card. They are typically issued to individuals that have the authority to make purchases on behalf of their organization; expenses are centrally billed to the cardholder's organization.

Q

R

Receipt

A hard copy document recording a transaction that took place at the point of sale, with a description that usually includes: date, merchant name/location, primary account number, amount, and reference number.

Recurring Billing

Transactions for which a cardholder grants permission to the Merchant to periodically charge his account number for recurring goods or services.

Reference Number

Number assigned to each monetary transaction in a descriptive billing system. Each reference number is printed on the monthly statement to aid in retrieval of the document, should it be questioned by the cardholder.

Refund

Create a credit to a cardholder account, usually as a result of a product return or to correct an error.

Regulation E

Electronic Funds Transfers - Establishes the rights, liabilities, and responsibilities of parties in electronic funds transfers and protects consumers when they use such systems.

Regulation Z

Truth in Lending - Prescribes uniform methods for computing the cost of credit, for disclosing credit terms, and for resolving errors on certain types of credit accounts. This federal regulation governs all aspects concerning credit cards. It pertains to the issuer and cardholder, as well as any organization involved in the processing of credit cards.

Request Authorization (auth)

Submits a transaction for Authorization Only. (See Authorization)

Retail Merchant

A merchant that provides goods and/or services in the retail industry, but is not a mail/phone merchant, a recurring services merchant, or a T&E merchant.

Retrieval Request

An issuer's request for a transaction receipt, which could include the original, a paper copy or facsimile, or an electronic version thereof.

Reversal

An online financial transaction used to negate or cancel a transaction that has been sent through interchange in error.