Payment Glossary: 70+ Payment Terms and Definitions for 2026

Understand the language behind payments, approvals, and smart retries.

Learn our 70+ terms

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Cascading
Cascading automatically sends a declined transaction to another processor or acquirer during checkout. Used well, it can recover soft declines and reduce revenue loss from outages or routing gaps.
Cascading
payment cascading, cascaded payment processing, multi-acquirer cascading

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Strong Customer Authentication
Strong Customer Authentication requires two-factor verification for many EEA online payments. Getting exemptions, 3D Secure flows, and retries right helps reduce false declines and protect conversion.
Strong Customer Authentication
SCA, PSD2 SCA

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Underwriting
Merchant underwriting is how acquirers and PSPs assess a business before and during processing. It influences limits, reserves, account holds, and how safely merchants can scale transaction volume.
Underwriting
merchant risk assessment, merchant account underwriting, acquirer underwriting