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Acquiring Bank: The bank that provides a merchant with its credit card processing account.

Address: The location of a web page on the Internet. It has this format: http://www.yourcompany.com/default.html

Authorization: The act of verifying that the cardholder has adequate funds available against their line of credit, that the credit card number is a valid number and that the card has not been reported as stolen. After a positive authorization, funds for the amount of the purchase are put in reserve. An authorization code is generated and sent to the merchant and the customer.

Authentication: The process of verifying the identity of a user, usually based on a username and password. During SSL transactions, authentication is the process that ensures that the website identity matches the one shown in the digital certificate.

AVS (Address Verification System): A fraud prevention feature for credit card processing. It checks to see that the billing address given by the customer at the time of purchase matches the address for the cardholder.

Bookmark: A Netscape term. Referred to as Favorites in Internet Explorer. A feature of most Web browsers that allows you to mark interesting pages so you can easily return to them at a later time.

Browser: An application program that interfaces with the World Wide Web for viewing web pages and moving from one Internet location to another.

Cardholder: A person or company with an active credit card account.

Card-Not-Present (CNP) Transaction: A credit card transaction in which the actual credit card was not presented to the merchant. The merchant receives the customers information by telephone, fax, mail or online. Also referred to as a Mail Order/Telephone Order (MOTO)Transaction.

Certificate Authority: A trusted third-party organization or company that issues digital certificates used to create digital signatures and public-private key pairs. It's role is to ensure that the owner of a digital certificate is who he or she says he is. The Certificate Authority confirms the owner's identity through an arrangement with a financial institution, usually a credit card company.

Chargeback: A chargeback occurs when a cardholder disputes a credit card transaction and requests that the transaction be reversed.

Client: A computer or system that requests files or services from another computer (known as a server).

Cookie: A cookie is a file from a website that is placed on the customer's computer so that it can remember the preferences of the user they next time they visit the site. It can contain information such as the pages downloaded. On the next visit, the website can read the cookies.

Cryptography: The art of protecting information by the use of encryption and decryption. A secret key is required to decipher the message. In e-Commerce, it is applied to the protection of sensitive electronic communications.

Data: Refers to basic elements of information which can be represented in digital form for computer processing. This includes, text, voice and video.

Database: A collection of information that is organized to allow a computer to search for and retrieve information.

Digital Certificate: An electronic document issued by trusted third parties. Used for security purposes, it is an electronic ID that verifies that the identity of the user.

Digital Signature: Used to prevent forgery and tampering with electronic documents, the digital signature provides a way for the recipient to verify the sender and the integrity of the document.

Digital Wallet: Password protected software that resides on the user's computer and stores payment options and shipping information in an encrypted form that can be transferred to an online merchant when the user wants to make a purchase. Also called an Electronic Wallet.

Domain Name: A unique identification name that identifies an Internet site. Domain names are registered with a central registry.

Download: The copying of data files from a remote computer to your computer. The opposite process of copying from your computer to a remote computer is an upload.

Electronic Commerce (e-Commerce): Describes buying or selling goods or services over the Internet. The term is synonymous with e-business which refers to all aspects of conducting business online including customer service, marketing, public relations and advertising.

Electronic Wallet: See Digital Wallet

Encryption: A method of translating data into a secret code so that it can only be deciphered by the intended recipient by means of a secret key. It is commonly used to send sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, over the Internet.