Glossary

An acquirer is a special form of financial service provider for credit cards. Merchants are screened and accepted into the acquirer’s credit card program for which merchants need to conclude corresponding acceptance contracts. To process credit card data, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) needs to be fulfilled which can be handled by a payment service provider.

Address Verification System is a system primarily used to combat fraud that verifies whether the billing address of the credit card matches the address that was given by the consumer in the online shop, i.e. the system checks the billing address of the credit card provided by the consumer with the address on file at the credit card company.

Alphanumeric is a combination of alphabetic and numeric characters and is used to describe the collection of Latin letters and Arabic digits or a text constructed from this collection.

The back-end offers the possibility to execute back-end operations for successful payments like deposit, refund or recurring payments.

Backend operations both for QMORE Checkout Seamless and QPAY Checkout Page are called by a server-to-server request from the web server to the QENTA Checkout Server. These operations are possible to call automatically from the backend or manually from the user interface. They’re subdivided into two categories:

A boolean is a data type that has two values:

The checkout process is an umbrella term containing the following subordinate steps a consumer has to go through when checking out the items in the shopping basket:

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is used to format the design and layout of an HTML page that is displayed in a web browser.

A customer is a person who bought and uses QENTA Payment CEE solutions and services. In the context of QENTA, a merchant is a customer.

Merchant unique ID is used to identify the online shop within the QENTA Checkout Server. QENTA uses customerId in any communication between the merchant and QENTA Payment CEE.

A consumer is a person who purchases real or digital goods in an online shop.

Data storage stores sensitive payment data entered by the consumer during the payment process in the online shop when QMORE Checkout Seamless is used. The merchant doesn’t need a PCI-compliant online shop and web server since sensitive payment data such as credit card numbers, expiration date, etc. are directly sent from a web form in the online shop to the QENTA data storage, thus bypassing the web server. The data storage is unique to each and valid for 30 minutes after the latest access.

Typical financial service providers (FSP) are credit card companies, banks and banking systems. Their field of activities includes accepting money transfer requests, approval or denial of transactions and processing of payments. Since every payment request needs to be processed, the payment service provider, i.e. QENTA, transmits the payment information to the respective financial service provider. The payment is approved or denied and corresponding information is sent back to the payment service provider. Merchants need to close appropriate contract(s) with a financial service provider(s) depending on the payment methods they want to offer. The processed amount is transferred to the corresponding merchant’s account by the FSP.

A fingerprint is a method to ensure that sensitive parameters and their values sent from the online shop to the QENTA Checkout Server and vice versa are not changed by anyone who is transferring the data over the Internet.

The frontend receives the order data of the consumer in the online shop and handles the user interface for the payment process, especially the presentation of external pages of financial service providers like internet banking pages or pages for entering the 3-D Secure code.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is a markup language for layout web pages.

An integrator implements an online shop for a merchant and integrates QENTA Payment CEE solutions into the checkout process of the online shop.

Institutions such as banks, credit unions, savings, and loan associations, or even retailers issue credit cards to consumers and provide them with a credit line.

JavaScript is a programming language that is typically used in web browsers to add dynamic and interactive elements and functionality to an HTML page.

A merchant is the owner or operator of an online shop. This is typically a customer of QENTA Payment CEE using our solutions.

MOTO stands for accepting credit and debit cards by phone or via e-mail to settle a purchase, i.e. the consumer enters the website from any computer, selects an item or service, and calls or e-mails the merchant in order to place an order.

More about the possibilities QENTA offers to handle MOTO transactions is on the following link → Credit Card - Mail Order and Telephone Orders.

A non-transaction-based operation is a backend-operation that does not depend on existing orders i.e. such operations are carried out independently of any existing orders.

An online shop is a virtual shop accessible from a browser on the desktop computer, tablet or smartphone. In some cases also native apps for iOS or Android devices are called online shops, although this is not always appropriate from a technical point of view.

With the transaction a deposit is done immediately. This also means there is no payment in the approved state.

Most alternative payment methods have this as a default configuration, but some can be changed to two steps. The specific details for payment methods can be checked here.

When the payment of a certain amount is authorized, some financial service providers offer a one-off deposit of less than the authorized amount, e.g. if the price of the item the consumer ordered is reduced.
Not to be confused with a split capture.

Payment method is a specific way the consumer selects for purchasing a product in the online shop. Typical payment methods are credit cards, direct debits, invoices or installments.

The payment process is part of the checkout process and includes the following steps:

A payment service provider (PSP), i.e. QENTA, offers a technical interface allowing the online shop to interact with financial service providers. Payment service providers also assist merchants with supplementary services such as integration of payment methods, fraud and risk management, compliance with PCI DSS, etc.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a binding set of rules and procedures established by four major credit card companies (Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express) in 2004 and is aimed at companies that accept credit cards as a payment method. The primary objective of PCI DSS is the prevention of fraud and theft of credit card data on the Internet.

The PCI DSS Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) is a tool that merchant may use to determine whether the online shop meets established PCI DSS requirements. Different versions of the PCI DSS SAQ are available to cover all possible merchant scenarios.

A secret is a (pre-shared key) that is only known to the merchant, the integrator of the online shop and QENTA Payment CEE. This secret is used to secure the transfer of all sensitive parameters and their values between the online shop and the QENTA Checkout Server.

A shop plugin is an additional module that is installed in the merchant’s online shop. Our free-of-charge shop plugins which we offer for many popular shop systems, serve as a technical connection between the shop system and QPAY Checkout Page or QMORE Checkout Seamless, or both for some plugins.

For the installation of a shop plugin, typically no programming work is required. Shop plugins are constantly updated and improved in order to be compatible with the current version of the shop systems and to offer merchants all available payment methods.

When the payment of a certain amount is authorized, some financial service providers offer to deposit the total amount not in one single deposit but in multiple smaller deposits. E.g. when shipping only some items from the consumer’s shopping basket,the merchant can make deposits for each separate shipping up to the total authorized amount (e.g. 100 authorized, 2×50 deposited).
Not to be confused with partial capture.

A (financial) transaction is a communication carried out between the consumer of the online shop, the merchant and the financial institution to exchange an asset for payment.

A transaction-based operation is a backend operation that depends on existing orders, i.e. orders which have been completed by the consumers in the online shop and which are at the disposal for further actions.

Authorization is performed, the amount is reserved, but no money flow will be triggered automatically.

The deposit in the second step will charge the money from the consumer’s account.

As an independent service provider for secure settlement of online payment transactions, QENTA offers solutions for any checkout process with more than 20 tailor-made payment methods available to consumers. Same as the profound technical, commercial, and consultant knowledge of experienced staff who has been working in this sector for many years.

QENTA Payment CEE has been operating on the market since 2000.

QENTA Checkout Server is our technology platform where our payment solutions are running as PaaS (Platform as a Service).

QPC Payment Center is our online portal and allows merchants to search and view payments and start additional operations and transactions, e.g. approve or refund. The merchant can access the QPC Payment Center in demo mode by using test as username and jcv45z as password.

If a merchant uses the QPC Payment Center in demo mode then displayed demo data is immutable.

Security approach originally developed by Visa for online credit card payments with the main objective being the reduction of fraud and credit card abuse. By offering 3-D Secure, merchants benefit from payment guarantees and will receive the outstanding amounts even in case of a consumer payment default (a liability shift from the merchant to the card issuer occurs).

During the payment process, the consumer first enters the credit card number. A connection is established to the card issuer and the consumer is prompted to enter the 3-D Secure code which is only known to him in order to prove that he is the authorized card holder. After successful authentication, the transaction is carried out.

The 3-D Secure code is defined by the cardholder during the registration process and must not be confused with the 3 or 4 digit CVC code which is printed on the back of a credit card. The most common services using 3-D Secure are American Express SafeKey, Visa Secure, and Mastercard ID Check.