CheckGateway.com’s Glossary of Financial Terms (U-Z)

Use CheckGateway.com as your information resource. Look through our glossary to get the details you need about merchant services, fraud protection and ACH processing.

Underwriting

The process of determining risk inherent in a particular applicant’s credit history for the purpose of establishing suitable conditions of merchant interaction.

Verified by Visa

Verified by Visa is a system used by Visa as an added layer of security for online credit card transactions. The same system is used by Master Card under the name SecureCode.

Virtual Point-of-Sale Terminal

A secure protocol that allows merchants, to manually submit transactions using a computer.

Virtual Terminal

A Merchant interface device for manually keying and submitting transactions.

Visa Cardholder Information Security Program

A Visa program stating its technology and sensitive data security requirements for merchants and merchant service providers. Visa requires compliance from its members.

VISA PAS (Payment Authentication Service)

Under Visa's PAS, cardholders must authenticate themselves by verifying their identity with a password when buying from a Web storefront. The ultimate aim is to secure merchant databases against compromise by hackers, and to password-protect card numbers stored in a database.

Void

Transactions used to cancel original charge transactions not yet submitted for settlement. To execute voids merchants must submit the transaction ID of the original charge transaction against which they are submitting the void.

Zero Balance Account (ZBA)

A checking account in which a balance of zero is maintained by automatically transferring funds from a master account in an amount only large enough to cover checks presented.