Glossary of Terms

An automated clearing house is a computer-based electronic network for processing transactions, usually domestic low value payments, between participating financial institutions.

Anti-money laundering (AML) refers to the web of laws, regulations, and procedures aimed at uncovering efforts to disguise illicit funds as legitimate income.

Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other.

The batch disbursement process removes the hassle of executing many manual transfers, thus increasing the speed and success rate of disbursements.

The Bank for International Settlements is an international financial institution owned by central banks that "fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for central banks"

Business-to-business is a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction directly with another.

Business-to-Person is a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction directly with a person or the general public.

Central Bank Digital Currency is digital money that is issued by a central bank and listed as a liability item on the central bank's balance sheet.

Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) is focused on restricting the movement of funds to terrorist organizations. It may focus on a variety of entities, such as banks, charities, and businesses, and several activities, such as regulation, supervision, and reporting.

Core banking system as a back-end system that processes daily banking transactions and posts updates to accounts and other financial records. Core banking systems typically include deposit, loan and credit processing capabilities, with interfaces to general ledger systems and reporting tools.

A central securities depository (CSD) is a specialized financial organization holding securities like shares, either in certificated or uncertificated (dematerialized) form, allowing ownership to be easily transferred through a book entry rather than by a transfer of physical certificates.

A digital wallet linked to a financial institution.

Digital Currency Electronic Payment, or DCEP, is a new and innovative digital payment version of China's fiat currency – the Renminbi (RMB) – that the Chinese government is rolling out throughout the country.

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) refers to the technological infrastructure and protocols that allows simultaneous access, validation, and record updating in an immutable manner across a network that's spread across multiple entities or locations.

An end user is a person or other entity that consumes or makes use of the goods or services.

Government-to-Person is a situation where a respective government makes a transaction directly with a person or the general public.

Key Event Receipt Infrastructure (KERI) is the first fully decentralized, ledger-less identity system. Identifiers are not locked to any given ledger, may switch as needed and are fully portable.

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Google originally designed Kubernetes, but the Cloud Native Computing Foundation now maintains the project. Kubernetes, often abbreviated as “K8s”, orchestrates containerized applications to run on a cluster of hosts. The K8s system automates the deployment and management of cloud native applications using on-premises infrastructure or public cloud platforms.

Near-field communication is a set of communication protocols that enables communication between two electronic devices over a distance of 4 cm or less. NFC offers a low-speed connection through a simple setup that can be used to bootstrap more-capable wireless connections.

A digital wallet that is not linked to a financial institution.

An offline digital payment means a transaction which does not require internet or telecom connectivity.

A payment service provider is a third-party company that assists businesses to accept a wide range of online payment methods, such as online banking, credit cards, debit cards, e-wallets, cash cards, and more.

Programmable money is money with in-built rules and that comes with constraints for the user. With these rules, money could also be programmed to have an expiration date or be restricted for certain goods and/or services.

The point of sale or point of purchase is the time and place where a retail transaction is completed.

Person-to-Business payments are defined as any payment from an individual (payer) to a merchant or business for products and/or services.

Peer-to-peer transactions are electronic money transfers made from one person to another through an intermediary.

Person-to-government payments are defined as any payment from an individual (payer) to a public entity (payee), including payments for public services, taxes and utility services.

Real-Time Gross Settlement System refers to a funds transfer system that allows for the instantaneous transfer of money and/or securities.

A software development kit is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework.

Settlement can be defined as the process of transferring funds through a central agency, from payer to payee, through participation of their respective banks or custodians of funds.

Third-tier institutions would include card companies, stablecoin issuers, centralized issuers and non-bank financial institutions that offer payment services, but not lending, and which are much less strictly regulated in most countries.

Uniquely identifiable digital units of value

A two-tier distribution mode refers to where the central bank issues digital currency to intermediaries such as commercial banks, or other authorized parties.

Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, sometimes referred to as "quick codes" or "feature codes", is a communications protocol used by GSM cellular telephones to communicate with the mobile network operator's computers. USSD can support interactions from a feature phone.

Unspent transaction output represents some amount of digital currency which has been authorized by one account to be spent by another.

User experience is the interaction and experience users have with a company's products and services.