Glossary of Terms

account statement

A periodic summary of account activity (for example, current balance, deposits, and withdrawals).

ACH

Automated Clearing House. A national electronic payment system. The ACH operator is the United States Federal Reserve.

An ACH payment can contain more information than a check and is generally more reliable and cost-efficient. ACH transactions allow your company to make deposits to recipients' accounts (for example, payroll or pensions) or debits to customers' accounts (for example, billing) automatically.

ACH transactions are sent on a daily basis to the Federal Reserve bank, where they are sorted and sent on to the recipient's financial institution. This process is guaranteed to happen within two business days.

ACH credit

A transaction through the ACH Network originated to pay a receiver (deposit into an account).

ACH debit

A transaction through the ACH Network originated to remove funds from the receiver (withdrawal from an account).

advice-to-receive

Message to the financial institution advising the host of an amount that will be deposited into one of the user’s accounts

affiliate

An entity within a parent financial institution that may operate independently and have different rules for doing business. When affiliates are enabled and set up in the banking application, many settings can be configured on a per-affiliate basis, including different locales, branding, and products.

alert

A short message informing the company user that a specific activity has occurred. Based on the alerts enabled by the financial institution, the company user can select which alerts they wish to use. A type of notice. Contrast with disclaimer.

approver

A user who is authorized to approve (or reject) the actions of other users in the company. There are different types of approvers, for example, approvers of disbursements (payment and transfer requests), upload approvers, and approvers of user maintenance. Each of the different types of approval requires being granted permission by a CSA in your company. In addition, to approve a particular type of activity in the system, you must also be entitled to perform that type activity.

BCI

Batch Control Infrastructure. The banking application's model for batch processing, which enables uniform processes for all batch activity and separates core data manipulation from environmental elements.

beneficiary

An individual or business recipient of a wire payment

Book Wire

An internal Fedwire® payment

These Fedwire payments are routed to the financial institution’s own wire back-end system rather than being released to the Federal Reserve.

CCD

Cash Concentration and Disbursement. An ACH payment type that is used to consolidate funds between business entities.

challenge question

An alternative method by which customers and corporate users can log in to the banking application when they have forgotten their password. Also called “secret questions.”

child support

ACH payments that transfer funds withheld from employee wages to the State Disbursement Units (SDU), for the purpose of fulfilling the employee’s child support obligations.

Child support payments use the CCD+ format, which includes an addendum record that provides additional information about the child support payment and the payer.

CHIPS

Clearing House Interbank Payments System. A payments system for clearing large-value, U.S. dollar payments in real-time.

class of service

A defined set of system access levels, services, and fees that can be assigned to multiple companies in an affiliate. Having distinct classes of service enables the financial institution to establish levels of access for different categories of customers. Where an individual company might require slightly different access, the general class of service settings can be overridden at the company level.

CSA

A Company system administrator is a user who has been assigned special administrative privileges that grants them access to functionality not available to other users. This includes the ability to change company contact information and account preferences, manage banks, and manage the entitlements of other users.

CTX

Corporate Trade Exchange. An ACH payment type that features flexible, variable length addenda. This payment type enables a company to issue multiple payments to trade creditors in a single transfer of funds.

DFI

Depository Financial Institution.

disbursement

An ACH payment that transfers money from your company’s account to an account owned by another person or business.

disclaimer

A short message that informs the company user of a policy or procedure. Disclaimers are presented as either a footer or in a new browser window. A type of notice. Contrast with alert.

draft

An order by one party to another party to pay a stated sum to the person or firm in whose favor the draft is made

The draft may be for single-currency or foreign exchange payment.

drawdown

A request on behalf of a customer to debit their account at another financial institution and send a credit to their account at the financial institution

dual approval

See dual authorization.

dual authorization

An optional security feature that the financial institution can employ so that different types of actions in the system must be authorized (or approved) by one additional user before they take effect.

Also called dual approval. This term refers specifically to features that require only one additional approval. Contrast with multiple authorization, which applies to transactions involving monetary amounts and which may require more than one additional approver.

EDI

Electronic Data Interchange. Information that accompanies ACH transactions. Also referred to as CPN or Corporate Payment Notification.

encryption

The transformation of data to a difficult-to-interpret format as a mechanism for protecting its confidentiality, integrity, or authenticity. The process is also called encoding and the encoded data must be decoded with a specific key in order to be read.

entitlements

The collective name for a user's security access to specific accounts, data services, and system functions.

EPN

Electronic Payment Network. A private sector ACH operator frequently used by large banks.

exchange rate

A fluctuating rate of exchange between two actively traded currencies.

federal tax

See US Federal Tax.

Fedwire

A payment made using the Fedwire® Funds Transfer System, the real-time gross settlement system for the United States and the U.S. dollar

FI

Financial institution. Sometimes known as a financial service provider.

float

The portion of the account ledger balance that is not available to you until posted.

0 Day Float shows the credits immediately available. 0 Day items are reflected in the available balance.

1 Day Float is the portion of the credits reported to the account that are not available to you until one business day after the posting date.

2+ Day float is the portion of the credits reported to the account that are not available to you until 2 or more business days after the posting date.

functional entitlement

A user’s security access to perform specific system functions, such as creating and modifying a payment, or viewing a payment. A user’s functional entitlements are configured in Universal Online Banker.

gateway operator

A financial intermediary in a cross-border ACH payment, namely an IAT International transaction. The gateway operator provides the entry and exit points to the national payments systems involving the United States and other countries.

holding company

An entity that can have one or more child companies or subsidiaries. Holding companies operate in the same way as typical companies and can have associated accounts.

holiday schedule

Default non-processing days for the financial institution, defined at the system level. See also processing schedule.

IAT

International ACH Transaction. A transaction (instruction and settlement) made via the ACH Network involving a financial institution located outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. The recipient of an IAT payment can be either a company or an individual.

There are distinct payment types for IAT payments:

• IAT - International — An ACH transaction that originates in the U.S. with an offshore destination. The payment may travel offshore as an IAT or may have a destination to a U.S. bank that has instructions to send the payment offshore via any payment type. (If the sender knows the payment will ultimately move offshore, even though the banking information is U.S., the sender must initiate the payment as an IAT.)
• IAT - Domestic — An ACH transaction that originates in a foreign country (typically by wire), is introduced into the ACH system in the U.S. and has recipients with a domestic destination.

international wire

An international wire payment (USD or foreign currency).

marketing messages

The messages that are displayed to customers who log in to the system or to any other potential Internet customer who visits the financial institution’s sign-on page. Also known as banner ads.

memo post transaction

A transaction that has not yet posted, but is temporarily included in the current day's available balance until the nightly ledger update, at which time the transaction is processed and cleared for the next day.

MultiBank

An international wire payment, either single-currency or cross-currency, that debits a customer’s account at another bank (acting as a pass-through)

multi-factor authentication

Techniques for authenticating a person that require more than one form of credential. Unique credentials can be in the form of passwords, tokens (hardware or software), and digital certificates.

multiple authorization

An optional security feature that an the financial institution can employ so that different types of transactions must be authorized (or approved) by a certain number of additional users. The number of approvals required depends on configuration choices made by the financial institution. To approve or reject something that is pending approval, a user must have additional entitlement as an approver.

This term refers specifically to features that involve monetary amounts. The number of approvals required can be set as a fixed number, a variable number based on the transaction amount, or a variable number based on panel authorization rules that the company establishes.

Contrast with dual authorization, which is similar but applies to actions in the system that do not involve monetary amounts.

notice

A piece of information presented to a company user when a preset condition is met, such as an account balance reaching a certain threshold or the passing of a specific date. Notices may also be used to communicate the policy of the financial institution.

ODFI

Originating Depository Financial Institution. Any financial institution that does ACH origination.

on-others

ACH transactions (debits and credits) where the originator and recipients’ accounts reside outside the financial institution.

on-us

ACH transactions (debits and credits) where the originator and recipients’ accounts reside within the financial institution. On-us bank IDs are configured in Universal Online Banker’s Configuration > System area.

You can decide whether to split the on-us transactions into a second file at batch processing time, thus saving the ACH processing fees for the on-us transactions.

ordering customer

The ultimate originator for the company or person originating the wire/draft payment. In the banking application, a specific type of third party.

originator

The originating company or individual in an ACH transaction.

PIN

Personal Identification Number.

PIN authentication

A method for authenticating a user’s identity when creating and approving payments whereby the user is required to enter a PIN, which is created and assigned by the financial institution.

positive pay

A service which allows you to view check disbursements that are suspected of fraud or are not reflected in the issue data stored for your company at the financial institution.

PPD

Prearranged Payment and Deposit. An ACH payment type that is used to transfer funds between an individual's bank account and a company account.

preferred bank

Banks defined for usage within the banking application and flagged as “preferred” so that they are included in lists from which users can quickly select while working in the system. A company’s list of preferred banks can include standard banks that are flagged as preferred by the financial institution or by the banking application's users, and they can also include banks that corporate users manually enter.

prenote

A shortened form of pre-notification. A zero amount ACH entry sent through the ACH Network to a recipient’s financial institution in advance of any actual transactions being sent. A prenote enables the receiving financial institution to validate the verify the account and routing information.

process schedule

Processing times for a particular banking function, or process, used to convey cutoff times to customers. A schedule also specifies non-processing days according to the bank’s defined holiday schedule.

product

A type of account that is created within a subtype. For example, the savings subtype could include products such as Statement Savings and Preferred Savings.

product subtype

Product subtype is a group within a product type. For example, two subtypes of the Deposit type are Checking and Savings. Product subtypes are also referred to as subtypes.

product type

This highest level of product configuration consists of three basic types: Deposit, Credit, and Loan. It is also referred to as just type.

profile

The collection of data that defines a company within the system. The profile is created during enrollment and includes an ID and other basic information, plus a class of service association. The class of service determines the features, fees, and transaction limits that apply to the customer or company.

RCK

Re-presented Check. An ACH entry that enables collection on a re-presented (returned) check through the ACH payment system.

RDFI

Receiving Depository Financial Institution. The financial institution of the recipient’s account.

recipient

An individual or business that has money transferred into its accounts or taken from its accounts through an ACH payment. ACH recipients are categorized as either domestic or international.

reminder

A message sent to prompt an action on the part of the user. For example, a user could create a reminder to create a payment on a specified day.

returned item

A suspect item presented through the Positive Pay service that you have decided not to pay.

reversal

Correction of an erroneous or duplicate ACH payment batch that was transmitted to the financial institution's back-office application. A reversal can be for an entire batch or individual transactions in a batch.

RSA

A highly secure, two-factor authentication method that relies on a hardware or software token. With RSA authentication, a user enters a numeric passcode consisting of the RSA token code plus an RSA PIN (a unique personal identification number) — the two “factors.”

secure message

Email messages back and forth between banking customers and authorized support personnel within an authenticated banking session. Secure messages are sent to an entire support group, from which point they can be assigned to a work queue and then associated with a specific issue.

standard bank

Banks loaded into the banking application by the financial institution through a batch job; the list of all standard banks constitutes the financial institution’s master list of banks.

STP

Straight Through Processing. The flow of electronic payments from the originating company’s accounts payable system, through the banking channels, to the receiving company’s accounts receivable system, without human intervention.

subtype

See product subtype.

suspect

A check that has been identified as inconsistent with the information the customer provided to the financial institution through the file transfer of issue data.

tax authority

Entities to whom taxes are paid, such as Alabama (a state authority) or Federal (US government).

tax format

An individual tax payment format used by a particular tax authority. Formats used by the various authorities may differ significantly. For example, Alabama may have a beer tax payment format, but Utah may not.

Tax, ACH

ACH payments for state or federal taxes. ACH federal tax payments are made to the Internal Revenue Service through EFTPS (Electronic Federal Tax Payment System).

Tax payments use the CCD+ format, which includes an addendum record that provides additional information about the tax payment and the payer.

TEL

Telephone-initiated entry. ACH debits from a recipient’s account following an oral authorization by the recipient over the telephone. These entries require either that there is an existing relationship between the originator and the receiver, or that the receiver is the one who initiates the telephone call.

third party

An individual or business that has money transferred into its accounts or taken from its accounts through a payment.

transaction type

An activity at the account level, such as a deposit, a withdrawal, or even a late fee. The financial institution creates and maintains its list of transaction types in Universal Online Banker which correspond to transaction types on the host.

US Federal Tax

A payment made for federal taxes that will settle as of the current day, made using the U.S. Treasury’s FEDTAX II system

value date

The date on which a wire transaction is settled by payment and delivery.

WEB

Web payment/Internet-initiated entry. ACH debits from a recipient’s account following authorization by the recipient over the Internet. Other methods of authorization (such as through the mail or over the telephone) are not acceptable forms of authorization.

wildcard character

Typographic symbol that represents an unspecified alphanumeric value. The banking application supports the asterisk (*) wildcard character when performing searches, such as for customers or accounts. It can be used to represent any collection of unspecified characters.

wire payment

A general term for an electronic transfer of funds across a network. The banking application supports a variety of specific wire payment types.