Glossary

A forced reversal of a card payment, initiated by the cardholder's bank rather than by the merchant. Confirmed crypto payments cannot be reversed this way, which removes the fraud but also removes the recourse.

Community slang for holding an asset through steep declines rather than selling. It describes conviction as a virtue, and it is a poor frame for any decision a business has to justify to a board.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt. In crypto communities it labels negative sentiment about an asset or project, and it is applied both to manipulation and to accurate criticism somebody dislikes.

The network charge for including a transaction in a block, paid to the network rather than to a payment provider. It varies by chain and by congestion, and it decides whether small payments are viable at all.

Know Your Customer, the identity verification a regulated business performs on the people it serves. In crypto payments it may apply to the merchant, to the payer, or to both, and the difference matters commercially.

A payment provider that never holds merchant funds. Addresses belong to a wallet the merchant controls and the provider only watches the chain, which removes counterparty risk and rules out fiat conversion.

Community slang for selling an asset during a decline rather than holding. Used as an insult, which makes it a social pressure rather than an argument about whether selling was correct.

The period during which a gateway holds the crypto amount owed at a fixed rate. Price movement inside that window is the provider's risk, which is why the window is short and priced into the spread.

A percentage of merchant funds a provider holds back against future refund or reversal obligations, released after a set period. Standard in card processing and present in crypto more often than merchants expect.

The point at which a payment becomes funds the merchant controls. In crypto acceptance the settlement currency, the schedule and any reserve held against the balance are separate commercial terms.

A crypto token designed to hold a fixed value against a reference currency, usually the US dollar. Most merchant payment volume settles in stablecoins because they remove price movement between payment and settlement.

A crypto payment arriving for less than the invoiced amount, usually because the payer deducted the network fee from the total. Provider handling varies enormously and is the least documented behaviour in the category.

An HTTP request from a payment provider to your server, sent when a payment changes state. It is the mechanism that tells a shop an order is paid, and it is delivered over an unreliable network.