Glossary¶

adunopay / payments terms, acronyms, and definitions. See also Card Payments Basics.

A¶

adunopay

The PSP / acquirer-processor in this stack — the merchant's single point of contact (terminal app, onboarding, reporting, settlement, reconciliation). Also the company brand.

Formerly Checksum / tapypay

adunopay is the current brand for both the company and the product. Checksum (company) and tapypay (product) are the old names — you will still meet them in places that were never renamed:

the legal entity is still checksum AG (Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham);
live domains are still *.tapypay.ch (see Portals) and checksum.ch;
API paths (/api/tapypay/…), the tapypayConnect APK, the checksum.1password.eu tenant and the Checksum-CH GitHub org keep their old names.

Rule of thumb: rename the brand in prose, never rename a hostname, path, or identifier.

AML (Anti-Money Laundering)

The legal/regulatory checks a PSP must run to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. In Digital Onboarding it is one of the three risk checks (with KYC and sanction screening) that produce a written statement.

ATV (Average Ticket/Transaction Value)

The average value of a merchant's card transactions. Requested during onboarding (alongside expected yearly revenue) as a risk-assessment input.

Acquirer

The merchant's bank/processor for card payments. Acquires (accepts) transactions on the merchant's behalf, routes them to the schemes, and pays out the merchant. Must be a regulated, licensed scheme member — not necessarily a deposit-taking bank. Example: Worldline. German: left as Acquirer / Acquiring (⚠️ not Akquisition).

Acquirer-Processor

The entity providing the technical connection into the schemes on the acquiring side. In this stack: Silverflow.

Authorization

The real-time step where the issuer checks the card and funds and reserves (holds) the amount. Happens in ~2 seconds at the terminal. No money moves — only a hold.

B¶

BIN (Bank Identification Number): The first digits of a card number; identifies the issuer so the scheme can route the transaction. No bank account numbers (IBANs) are exchanged between counterparties.
boncard: Provider used in this stack to connect the local Swiss schemes TWINT and Lunch-Check.

C¶

Chargeback: A dispute in which the cardholder contests a charge; funds are pulled back from the merchant.
CIA (Checksum Integration API): The on-device API that integrates the merchant's Kasse (the ECR / till) with the adunopay terminal app — the Lime-Tech Tapypay integration. The acronym and the Lime-Tech integration name predate the rebrand to adunopay and are still the technical names in use. In the Payment Topology, the Web ECR and Android ECR feed transactions to adunopay through the CIA. German: Kasse = till / cash register.
Clearing: The exchange of final transaction records between issuer and acquirer (via the scheme) after the sale — the instruction to actually pay. Distinct from, and later than, authorization.
Cutoff: The configured time that defines a settlement "business day." Transactions before the cutoff settle in today's cycle; those after roll to the next. Defined in a scheme-/acquirer-specific timezone — not a universal midnight.
CID / ICA: Scheme member identifiers for the acquirer side, used for routing.

E¶

ECR (Electronic Cash Register): The merchant's till software. In this stack an Android ECR hands a transaction to the adunopay app via an on-device API.

F¶

Four-party model: The standard card-payment structure: cardholder, issuer, merchant, acquirer, plus the scheme in the middle as clearing house. Each member contracts only with the scheme — never bilaterally with each other.

I¶

Interchange fee: The issuer's slice of the MDR; usually the largest fee component. Paid by the acquirer to the issuer, set by the scheme.
Issuer: The cardholder's bank. Issues the card, holds the client's money, and approves or declines payments. Example: Credit Suisse. German: Issuer or Kartenherausgeber / Herausgeber.

K¶

KYC (Know Your Customer): Identity verification of the merchant and its responsible persons (contact, signatory, UBO) during onboarding. One of the three risk checks, with AML and sanction screening.
KYB (Know Your Business): Due diligence on a business customer, comparable to KYC for natural persons. KYB verifies that the merchant entity legally exists, that its registration and business activity match what the merchant entered during onboarding, and that its ownership/control structure is understood down to the relevant UBO or controlling person(s). In Digital Onboarding, KYB includes checks such as Zefix/company-register data, business address, legal form, NOGA/MCC consistency, IBAN linkage to the business, sanctions/PEP exposure through the entity and related persons, and whether the requested product/terminal setup fits the declared business. The KYB result is a core input to the written AML, KYC, and sanction-screening statement.

L¶

Lunch-Check: A Swiss meal-voucher scheme, connected via boncard.

M¶

MAS (Merchant Accounting System): The Merchant Accounting System: the backend/system of record for merchant accounting and acquiring operations. In current project language, MAS may be synonymous with the Admin Portal, the Merchant Portal, or both. TBD: confirm the exact naming boundary between MAS, Admin Portal, and Merchant Portal.
MCC (Merchant Category Code): A four-digit code classifying a merchant's line of business. Drives risk rules, scheme eligibility, and pricing. During onboarding the merchant's selected MCC is mapped against the NOGA code from the Zefix extract; a mismatch triggers manual review. Some MCCs are prohibited from onboarding — see Digital Onboarding.
MDR (Merchant Discount Rate): The total per-transaction fee the merchant pays, split between acquirer, scheme and issuer (the issuer's part being interchange).
MPOS (Mobile Point of Sale): A payment terminal running on a mobile device rather than dedicated hardware (see Softpay).

P¶

PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard): The global security standard governing how cardholder data is stored, processed, and transmitted. Administered by the PCI Security Standards Council and enforced by the card schemes, it defines a baseline of technical and operational controls (twelve requirements across six control objectives) to protect the cardholder data environment (CDE) and reduce card fraud. Applies to every party that touches card data — merchants, acquirers, issuers, processors, and PSPs like adunopay. Compliance is a certification: validated periodically (by self-assessment questionnaire or external audit, depending on transaction volume).
PEP (Politically Exposed Person): A person entrusted with a prominent public function, carrying higher money-laundering/bribery risk. PEP screening is a mandatory sanction screening during onboarding.
PSP (Payment Service Provider): The merchant's single integration point that hides scheme/acquirer complexity behind one connection — onboarding, terminal, reporting, settlement, reconciliation. In this stack: adunopay.

R¶

Reconciliation

The process of matching what was transacted against what was settled —
i.e. checking that every authorised/captured transaction shows up correctly in
the settlement and payout records, and flagging anything that
doesn't (missing, duplicated, wrong amount, fees off, FX differences,
chargebacks/refunds). Where settlement moves the money,
reconciliation verifies it afterwards and surfaces corrections when the
two sides disagree.: For adunopay this is a core service offered to merchants, not just an internal control: we reconcile the data on the merchant's behalf and hand them a clean, matched view of their transactions and payouts — turning raw scheme/acquirer reports into something they can trust and act on.

S¶

Scheme (Network): The card network connecting every issuer to every acquirer — Visa, Mastercard (and locally TWINT). Sets the rules, routes messages, and acts as the clearing house that nets and guarantees settlement.
Settlement: The actual transfer of funds, netted through the scheme's settlement bank: issuer → scheme settlement bank → acquirer → merchant. Happens per banking day, after the cutoff — not at the moment of sale.
Silverflow: The modern acquirer-processor — adunopay's technical gateway into Mastercard/Visa.
Softpay: Software that turns a plain Android phone into a payment terminal ("tap-to-pay on phone").

T¶

TID (Terminal ID): A unique identifier for a single payment terminal, used by the acquirer and schemes to identify which terminal processed a transaction. It sits below the MID (Merchant ID), which identifies the merchant account: one merchant (one MID) can own many terminals, each with its own TID. In our stack the terminal is a SoftPOS app rather than dedicated hardware, so the TID is virtual — there is no physical device it's burned into. It is currently issued by the acquirer, Hobex.

To confirm

Whether adunopay will eventually issue/manage TIDs itself (rather than relying on Hobex to assign them), and how a virtual TID is allocated to a SoftPOS install.
TWINT: A Swiss account/wallet-based payment scheme, connected via boncard. Follows the same authorize-then-settle idea as cards but is not on classic card rails.

U¶

UBO (Ultimate Business Owner): The natural person(s) who ultimately own or control a merchant entity. During onboarding, every owner with a company share ≥ 25% must be recorded as a UBO (except for sole proprietorships, where the onboarder represents all roles). See Digital Onboarding.