Glossary

Key terms

Glossary

New to payments... or, want a bit more detail? Check out some key terms

Acquiring essentially means allowing for card payments to be taken. It is performed by regulated entities with direct connections to scheme networks, providing “merchants” (i.e. legal entities taking card payments) with deposit accounts for scheme settlement. In our ecosystem, acquiring is used as a means to transfer funds from any networks scheme card accepted by the acquirer to a card or account on your programme, as a means of funding that account.

Pannovate Bankments Platform is integrated with a number of different acquirers operating in a variety of verticals, and catering to a number of different risk profiles and volumes, allowing a programme to find a best fit for their model.

Before issuing customers with a card or a bank account, certain checks are legally required to be performed to ensure the customer is who they say they are, verify that they will not use the card and/or bank account for malicious or illegal purposes, and that they are not a “person of interest”. The severity of these checks will depend both on the type of programme and person, however they are all done digitally (i.e. no need for any paperwork) and quickly.

Pannovate Bankments Platform allows programmes to select the most effective and cost efficient on-boarding journey for their value proposition and business model, while fully complying with regulatory, issuer and bank requirements.

Issuing branded cards (such as Visa or Mastercard) to consumers requires an organisation to be regulated (i.e. hold e-money licences) by a relevant authority and be a (principal) member of a scheme network. Unregulated entities require card issuers (or BIN Sponsor) to enable cards on a scheme network and enter into a relationship with their cardholders, hold the (prepaid) cardholder funds and act as a settlement point, paying out to the scheme network (which then settles with the merchants) for the cardholder spend.

Card processors connect directly with the scheme network and the issuer, (often) providing a system or record and enabling transactions to be processed (i.e. authorising or declining). Pannovate works with a number of different issuers and processors giving programmes the flexibility to choose the best providers for a particular programme’s business needs and risk profile.

Agency Banks, as the names suggests, are agents of clearing banks (i.e. Barclays, Lloyds etc.) that have been provided with their own sort codes and can allocate their customers with account numbers with that sort code. Pannovate’s Bankments Platform is integrated with several agency banking providers, allowing our programmes to request and receive new accounts instantly providing them with new flexibility in designing and segregating fund flows to match their business operations for collections, payables or customer fund management.

All accounts are unique and directly reachable via the payment scheme either through UK domestic Sort Code Account Number (SCAN) or IBAN. Pannovate Bankments Platform gives our programmes the capability to configure customisable payments rules, ensuring that the provision of service matches the business objectives of the programme.

A fully accredited facility scheme (often called a card bureau) which produces EMV (contactless) cards, based on program supplied artwork (which is subject to scheme approval) and personalises those cards with (processor created) card holder files (i.e. PAN numbers and cardholder names).

Card bureaus also manage the delivery of finished, personalised cards to cardholders, with a variety of packaging options on offer from a simple A4 letter to custom made card holders. Under Pannovate Managed Services, a programme has many card bureau options allowing them to find the best solution for their particular requirement.

Pannovate’s Ledger Services engine allows programmes to manage and control the authorisation decision process. Pannovate’s Ledger engine maintains the card balance information and participate in transaction authorisation by approving or declining the debit/credit of the corresponding card accounts. 

Upon a transaction event, Pannovate’s Ledger would respond with advice to the processor on whether the transaction (excluding financials e.g. presentments) can be approved or declined (taking into account the total balance impact of the transaction billing amount, fees and padding when determining whether to approve the transaction) with a specific reason, and the processor processes the advice and respond to the acquirer via the card scheme networks.

The authorisation decision process is in real time. Please note that the processor would still perform conventional transaction and cardholder checks such as EMV data, PIN, CVV2.

The current (digital) banking and payment, aka bankments, ecosystem is not an easy place to navigate. There is a plethora of suppliers occupying a different segment of the value chain, while also interacting with each other. To make matters even more confusing everyone is using the same terminology and seemingly offering a similar service.

Pannovate’s Bankments platform funnels the entire ecosystem into a easy and customisable user experience or a few simple API calls, which ensures that your programme is not only in-sync with today’s requirements, but also ready for whatever the future may bring.

Want to know more?