Guides
Payments glossary for practices
The words on your statements and in your contracts, in plain English.
- Acquirer
- The regulated bank that processes card payments for the practice and settles the money into its account. Medipay works with FCA-regulated acquirers.
- Merchant ID (MID)
- The account number the acquirer gives a practice. A practice can have more than one, for example one for online payments and one for a card machine.
- Gateway
- The service that securely carries a card payment from the payment page or terminal to the acquirer.
- Settlement
- The transfer of collected payments, less fees, into the practice's bank account. Usually in batches.
- Payout
- One settlement transfer as it appears on the bank statement, containing many individual payments.
- Pre-authorisation
- Reserving an amount on a patient's card now and taking it later, for example a deposit against a procedure. If it is never captured it releases back to the patient.
- Capture
- Taking a pre-authorised amount for real.
- MOTO
- Mail order, telephone order: a card payment keyed by staff rather than tapped or typed by the cardholder. A virtual terminal is a MOTO tool.
- Virtual terminal
- A secure screen for keying card payments taken over the phone.
- Pay link
- A secure payment page for a specific amount, sent to the patient by email or text.
- Chargeback
- A payment reversed because the patient disputed it with their bank.
- PCI DSS
- The card industry's security standard for anyone handling card payments.
- SAQ-A
- The shortest PCI self-assessment questionnaire, for merchants whose systems never touch card data.
- Interchange
- The part of the card fee paid to the cardholder's bank.
- Reconciliation
- Matching the money that arrived in the bank to the payments that were taken.
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