ABA
American Bankers Association

Access Networks
For most credit card applications, the cost of the access network is the single biggest factor in overall costs, often accounting for over half of the total. For that reason, there are many different solutions, depending on the provider, the application, and geographical constraints.

The simplest form of access network uses 800 service, in one of its many forms. Terminals at merchant locations across the country dial an 800 number that is terminated on a large hunt group of modems, connected directly to the acquirer's front-end processor (FEP). The FEP is typically a fault-tolerant machine, since an outage here will take out the entire service. A large acquirer will typically have two or more centers for terminating the 800 service. This allows better economy, due to the nature of 800 service tariffs, and allows for disaster recovery in case of a failure of one data center. An advantage of 800 service is that it is quite easy to cover the entire country with it. It also provides the most effective utilization of your FEP resources. (A little queuing theory will show you why.) However, 800 service is quite expensive. It always requires 10 (or 11) digits dialed, and in areas with pulse dialing it can take almost three seconds just to dial 1-800. The delay between dialing and connection is longer for 800 calls than many other calls, because of the way the calls get routed. All of this adds to the perceived response time at the merchant location, even though the acquirer has no control over it.

Account Reconcilement Services
Balancing a checkbook can be a difficult process for a very large business, since it issues so many checks it can take a lot of human monitoring to understand which checks have not cleared and therefore what the company's true balance is. To get around this, banks have developed a system which allows companies to upload a list of all the checks that they issue on a daily basis, so that at the end of the month the bank statement will show not only which checks have cleared, but also which have not. More recently, banks have used this system to prevent checks from being fraudulently cashed if they are not on the list, a process known as positive pay.

ACH
The Automated Clearing House (ACH) is an electronic network for financial transactions. ACH processes large volumes of both credit and debit transactions which are originated in batches.

Active Verifier™
An Infonox product, the Active Verifier digitally scans a photo ID and compares it to the customer.It provides a method of identifying check cashing customers in an automated environment. A customer inserts his photo ID into an acceptor, which then scans it and shows an image on the ATM screen. The customer is then notified that a camera will take his photo so that an enrollment center can compare the images.

ADA Compliant
ADA compliant simply indicates if the user interface is ADA compliant or not.

ADA simply stands for Americans with Disabilities Act. The US Department of Justice has issued ADA standards for accessible design. ADA design compliance a legal requirement for user interface design. Infonox user interface is ADA compliant.

American Express (AMEX)
American Express (AMEX) is a charge card issuer and acquirer. (Their other businesses are not important to this discussion.) All AMEX purchases are authorized by AMEX. They make most of their money from the discount fees, which is why they have the highest discount fee in the industry. That's one reason why AMEX isn't accepted in as many places as VISA and MC, and a reason why many merchants will prefer another card to an AMEX card. The control AMEX has over authorization allows them to provide what they consider to be better cardholder ("cardmember" to them) services.

ANSI -
American National Standards Institute

A Payment system
A Payment System involves the procedures and associated computer networks used to settle financial transactions arising from retail environments, bond markets, currency markets, futures, derivatives and options markets, and to transfer funds between financial institutions.

Armored Car Services
Large retailers who collect a great deal of cash may have the bank pick this cash up via an armored car company, instead of employees depositing the cash. Example Loomis Fargo, Brinks etc.

Assisted Self Service
Assisted Self Service empowers customers to control their transactions. It enables a single teller or cashier to service multiple lanes. And allows a business to reallocate staff to other customerfacing sales activities. Teller assisted self-service leads branch customers to greater self-sufficiency
without eliminating the personal touch of a teller interaction.

ATM
An automated teller machine or automatic teller machine (ATM) is a computerised telecommunications device that provides a financial institution's customers a method of financial transactions in a public space without the need for a human clerk or bank teller. Security is provided by the customer entering a personal identification number (PIN).

ATM Manufacturers
Automatic Teller Machine Manufacturers are the companies who manufacture the ATMs that we commonly use in banks and other retail spaces.

Top four manufacturers worldwide:

• Diebold
• NCR
• Wincor Nixdorf
• Triton
• Hyosung

Authorization
Electronic approval to proceed with a transaction. It would involve a message relayed via a processor to the cardholder’s bank account with encrypted PIN, amount and name of the cardholder. If all conditions match, the cardholder’s bank will send an authorization (a message) to proceed.

Automated Cash Handling
Is the process of dispensing, counting and tracking cash in a bank, retail, check cashing, payday loan / advance, casino or other business environment through specially designed hardware and software for the purposes of loss prevention, theft deterrence and reducing management time for oversight of cash drawer (till) operations.

The hardware consists of one or more of the following devices:·

• Cash dispenser
• Cash validator (acceptor)
• Cash recycler
• Rolled coin dispenser
• Loose coin validator (counter)

In an automated cash handling environment, a cashier or teller opens a cash drawer (till) at the start of shift by dispensing cash from the automated cash handling equipment. At the end of the shift, the cashier or teller deposits cash into the automated cash handling equipment which counts the cash and deposits it back into the safe. A manager sets permissions for each teller or
cashier for dispensing and counting cash. A few automated cash handling systems allow for networking and remote operation (dispensing, counting, reporting). Remote operation of automated cash handling equipment facilitates cost savings and efficiency by centralizing all cash related activity to one location that can remotely monitor and control cash operations.

Automated Clearing House
Services are usually offered by the cash management division of a bank. The Automated Clearing House is an electronic system used to transfer funds between banks. Companies use this to pay others, especially employees (this is how direct deposit works). Certain companies also use it to collect funds from customers (this is generally how automatic payment plans work). This system is the subject of the ire of some consumer groups, because under this system all banks assume that the company initiating the debit is correct until proven otherwise.