3-D Secure (3DS)
Card-payment authentication (Verified by Visa era through 3DS2) shifting fraud liability to issuers — at a conversion cost.
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Glossary Category: Payments & Finance
Deposits, payouts, processing, reserves and the financial plumbing of iGaming.
Acquirer
The bank holding the merchant account that accepts card payments — the regulated entity carrying the operator's card-scheme relationship.
Affiliate Invoicing
The billing leg of commission payments — self-billing or affiliate-issued invoices carrying tax and audit weight.
APM (Alternative Payment Methods)
Everything that isn't a card — wallets, bank schemes, vouchers, mobile money, crypto — often the majority of gambling volume by market.
Card Scheme Rules
Visa and Mastercard's private rulebooks for gambling transactions — registration programs, country permissions, coding and dispute regimes.
Cascading Payments
Automatic retry of failed deposits through alternative processors or routes — decline recovery as infrastructure.
Chargeback
A card payment reversed through the issuer at the cardholder's dispute — fraud's paper trail and friendly fraud's weapon.
Closed-Loop Policy
Returning withdrawals to the deposit source before alternative methods — an AML rule that shapes payout UX.
Crypto Payments
Cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals — instant, chargeback-free, jurisdictionally slippery, and compliance-intensive when done properly.
Deposit Success Rate
The percentage of attempted deposits that complete — the single most financially leveraged number in the cashier.
E-Wallet
Stored-value accounts (Skrill, NETELLER and kin) — gambling's historical payment workhorse for speed and card-block avoidance.
FX / Currency Conversion Fees
The spread and fees on currency conversion across deposits, settlements and payouts — a quiet percentage leak at every boundary.
High-Risk Merchant Account
Acquiring relationships priced and structured for high-risk verticals — gambling's default banking reality.
Instant Bank Transfer
Real-time account-to-account payment schemes (Faster Payments, SEPA Instant, RTP) applied to deposits and — the differentiator — withdrawals.
Mass Payouts
Batch disbursement infrastructure paying hundreds of partners or players across countries, methods and currencies in one run.
MCC 7995
The card-scheme merchant category code for gambling — the flag that triggers issuer blocks, scheme rules and high-risk treatment.
Net-30 / Payment Terms
The lag between period close and commission payment — net-15/30/60 terms that price working capital and program trust.
Open Banking
Bank-API payments — account-to-account transfers with strong authentication, no cards, and near-instant settlement in supporting markets.
Payment Gateway
The technical layer capturing and transmitting payment data between the operator's cashier and processors.
Payment Orchestration
A routing and management layer across multiple PSPs and methods — one integration, portable tokens, programmable routing.
Payment Reconciliation
Matching platform transactions against processor settlements and bank movements — where payment truth is established.
Payout Rail
The mechanism carrying money out — cards (OCT), bank transfers, e-wallets, open banking, crypto — each with speed, cost and coverage trade-offs.
Payout SLA
Published, committed timelines for paying players and partners — turning payment speed from marketing claim into measurable promise.
PSP (Payment Service Provider)
The company processing an operator's deposits and withdrawals — connecting the gambling business to card schemes, banks and alternative methods.
Refund vs Chargeback
Two reversals with opposite consequences — merchant-initiated refunds cost the amount; issuer-initiated chargebacks cost fees, ratios and standing.
Rolling Reserve
A percentage of processed volume withheld by the acquirer for months as a chargeback buffer — standard tax on high-risk processing.
Settlement (Payments)
The actual movement of processed funds to the merchant's account — on T+n schedules that define operating cash flow.
Stablecoin
Fiat-pegged crypto (USDT, USDC) — crypto's settlement speed without its volatility, increasingly the practical crypto rail in iGaming.
Treasury Management (iGaming)
Managing the operator's cash across currencies, entities, processors and obligations — liquidity as an operational discipline.
Withdrawal Processing Time
The operator-side interval between withdrawal request and money sent — approval queues plus KYC, before the rail's own speed.