Industry terms to know
This article lists industry terms that you will need to understand when using Adyen and Essentials.
Acquirer (or acquiring bank)
An acquirer is a bank or financial institute that receives funds for its merchant from a customer. To accept card payments, an acquirer should be licensed by corresponding card networks and either partner with a payment processor or be a payment processor itself.
Issuer (or issuing bank)
An issuer is a bank that issues cards for customers to make cashless payments via an ecommerce website, inside a mobile app, or in a physical store.
Chargeback
A chargeback is when a payment is reversed after a customer disputes a charge on their account statement. For example, if the product arrives damaged.
Chargebacks are different from refunds. For a refund, the customer asks the merchant directly to reverse the payment. For a chargeback, the customer makes the request to their issuing bank. The customer might request a chargeback if the merchant disagrees with the customer’s claim for a refund.
Dispute
If a merchant disagrees with a chargeback, they can dispute the request.
The merchant must then provide documents confirming the delivery of the product/service, and send them to the customer's acquiring bank or payment service provider.
When possible, Adyen helps its merchants automatically dispute chargebacks, and also provides extensive risk management services to analyze fraudulent transactions and minimize chargebacks.
Essentials
Essentials is the dashboard that lets you manage your Adyen merchant account and perform day-to-day activities.
Interchange ++
Interchange++ is a transparent pricing model used in Europe and North America for Visa and Mastercard transactions. Costs are split into three components:
The interchange fee for the issuing bank
The scheme fee for Visa or Mastercard
The acquirer fee set by a payment processor like Adyen
Fees vary based on factors such as card type, transaction type, and region, with an average total fee of 0.3-0.4% of the transaction amount in Europe and 2% in the US.
If you have more questions about your specific fees, please reach out to your franchisor.
Periodic risk reviews
The periodic risk review allows the customer risk review (CRR) to review the KYC (Know Your Customer) Data collected during the onboarding process and enable our merchants to update or correct this data.
Performing periodic risk reviews allows us to remain compliant with international financial regulations and mitigate the risks inherent to any financial activity.
PSP reference
Every payment or modification request (such as a refund or a capture request) in Adyen's system has a globally unique 16-character string called the PSP (Payment Service provider) reference associated with it. This string is alphanumeric (it can contain both numbers and letters). Note: You can find the PSP reference of a payment in Essentials.