Any party which accepts credit card transactions.

Commonly used by MiGS - this is part of the authentication for your merchant account.

Also referred to as "acquiring bank" or "acquiring financial institution". An acquirer is an entity that initiates and maintains relationships with merchants for the acceptance of payment cards.

Verification that someone is who they say they are. When you log in to a website with a username and password the process behind that is called Authentication. 

Approval of a transaction by or on behalf of an issuer according to defined operations regulations. The merchant receives, via telephone or authorisation terminal, this approval to process the transaction.

The process of completing a pre-authorised transaction.

A dispute resolution process that members use to determine the responsible party in a chargeback related dispute.

The facilitation of funds transfer between institutions.

Discipline of mathematics and computer science concerned with information security, particularly encryption and authentication. In applications and network security, it is a tool for access control, information confidentiality, and integrity. In short, principals of cryptography is used to make sensitive data unreadable.

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce refer to the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the internet and other computer networks.