Card not Present

A transaction that occurs without a physical card being present at the time of transaction. The most common examples of card not present transactions are e-commerce transaction, some other examples include mail order and telephone order transactions which have been prevalent in the cards industry since a long time now. Some of the recent examples include digital and mobile wallet transactions. Card Not Present transactions may or may not require the manual entry of credit card data based on the type of Card not present transaction.

Bed-and-Breakfast Deal

In the United Kingdom, the practice whereby the holder of a security sells it at the end of the day on the last day of the financial year and buys it back the next morning. Arrangements are made between the holder of the security and the broker to accommodate the sale and repurchase.

 

A bed and breakfast deal is carried out to maintain an investment portfolio while minimizing capital gains taxes. Positions are closed out at the end of the year and immediately reopened on the first day of the new financial year. Because this practice intentionally seeks to limit capital gains taxes, tax authorities work to minimize the occurrence of bed and breakfast deals.

Drive-By Deal

Slang referring to a deal in which a venture capitalist invests in a startup with the goal of a quick exit strategy. The VC takes little to no role in the management and monitoring of the startup.

 

A "drive-by VC" is a venture capitalist who does this type of deal. Critics say a drive-by deal results in companies which are pushed towards an IPO even though they aren’t ready. All because the VC wants to get its money out.

 

Note: Venture capital is a type of equity financing that addresses the funding needs of entrepreneurial companies that for reasons of size, assets, and stage of development cannot seek capital from more traditional sources, such as public markets and banks.

Upstairs Deal

A business agreement that is made by upper management, and is generally unknown to lower-level employees until it is publicly announced. The deal is referred to as an "upstairs deal" because executives typically have their offices in the higher floors of an office building. In mergers and acquisitions, an upstairs deal between two companies is more likely to result in a friendly takeover, as opposed to a hostile takeover.

 

Keeping word of a potential merger quiet allows executives to operate with a reduced risk of outside parties profiting from the deal by driving up share prices. Once a takeover offer is announced, share prices will react by either moving up or down to the indicated target price. For example, a deal in which a company tenders an offer of $15 per share with shares currently trading at $10 per share will likely result, when announced, in shares adjusting to $15.

Apple Pay

Apple Pay is a mobile payment service that lets certain Apple mobile devices make payments at retail and online checkout.  It intends to digitize and replace the credit or debit magnetic stripe card transaction at credit card terminals. The service lets Apple devices wirelessly communicate with point of sale systems using a near field communication (NFC) antenna, a "dedicated chip that stores encrypted payment information" (known as the Secure Element), and Apple's Touch ID and Passbook.

Package Deal

An order that contains a number of exchange or deposit items that must be completed simultaneously, or not at all. Package deals allow traders to ensure specific prices or times to maturity for multiple assets.

 

A trader may want to participate in a package deal to properly execute an investment strategy. For example, let’s say an investor wants to enter into a long-short strategy, where he or she purchases one stock and short sells another. Making this order a package deal will protect the investor in case either stock is not immediately available for purchase or sale. The investor may not want the exposure of being only long or short for the period of time required to complete the second transaction.

Sweetheart Deal

A merger, a sale or an agreement in which one party in the deal presents the other party with very attractive terms and conditions. The terms of a sweetheart deal are usually so lucrative that it is difficult to justify turning the offer down.

 

This term can be used to describe a variety of deals, but in general, a sweetheart deal is a transaction that simply can't be passed up. For example, a merger may be a sweetheart deal for the top executives of the target firm because they get very healthy buyout packages. This kind of sweetheart deal is usually considered unethical, however, because it may not be in the best interests of shareholders.

No Dealing Desk

A way of forex trading that provides immediate access to the interbank market. The interbank market is where foreign currencies are traded. This is different than trading through the dealing desks that are found in many banks and financial institutions. By using a dealing desk, a forex broker who is registered as a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) and Retail Foreign Exchange Dealer (RFED) can offset trades. If a no dealing desk system is used, positions are automatically offset and then transmitted directly to the interbank.

Forex brokers who use this system work directly with market liquidity providers. When trading through a no dealing desk, instead of dealing with one liquidity provider, an investor is dealing with numerous providers in order to get the most competitive bid and ask prices. An investor using this method has access to instantly executable rates.

Pre-Authorization

Pre-authorization is a banking term describing a practice where money is not taken from the payee’s account at the moment the transaction is made. The amount charged is instead made unavailable on that customers’ account – this is also known as authorization hold. Pre-authorisation is normally valid for 1- 5 days on debit cards, while credit card pre-auth periods can be longer and vary between issuers. This pre-auth period is usually used by retailers to make additional security checks on the card and the cardholder, to make sure that the transaction is not fraudulent. It also allows them time to make sure that the item being sold is in stock and ready to be shipped. Consumers near their credit or debit limits need to watch their available balances carefully, or the hold amount could push them over the limit, triggering a fee. Holds, also called blocks, are usually released within minutes or hours, but can sometimes last days.

Deal Blotter

A trader's record of all the transactions executed on a given day. The deal blotter contains basic information pertinent to a transaction, with additional information included on the deal slip. The deal blotter for a forex trader would include both opening and closing currency positions initiated by the trader.

 

In a forex trading firm with several traders, the sum of the positions on all the traders' deal blotters at the end of the trading day will indicate the change in the firm's net position at close. While deal blotters were paper-based before the advent of computerization, they are now increasingly computer-based, enabling traders to analyze and monitor their currency trades more rapidly and efficiently.

Deal Slip

A record of the essential details of a transaction entered into by a forex dealer. It is the primary source of record-keeping for a dealer. Deal slips are generally required to be archived for a certain number of years stipulated by the regulatory authority where the deal is recorded. Also known as deal ticket.

 

A deal slip is generally time-stamped to record the date and time of the transaction. It contains all of the information pertinent to a transaction, including but not limited to the amount of the transaction, whether it was a purchase or sale, the counterparty to the transaction, settlement date, transfer price, customer price and so on.

Host Card Emulation(HCE)

Host card emulation(HCE) enables NFC devices to perform contactless transactions in card emulation mode when the payment, other credentials and related card applications are stored somewhere other than the Secure element e.g., in the cloud, in a trusted execution environment on the mobile device, or in a virtual, software-based infrastructure on the mobile device. Currently, NFC-based applications that use the card emulation mode (i.e., where the reading terminal effectively sees the mobile phone mimicking a traditional contactless smart card and no change to the reading infrastructure is required) require the card application (e.g., payments, ticketing, access control) and its credentials (e.g., account information, ticket, access identifier and tokens) to be stored inside a hardware-based secure element on the mobile device itself.

Deal Breaker

An issue that, if left unresolved, prompts one party to discontinue discussions. A deal breaker may involve the presence of a particular requirement in a contract, or the lack of a certain provision. 

For negotiations that are non-iterative, meaning that there is no further interaction once terms are satisfied, the parties involved can be unwilling to budge over certain issues because they know that this is their only chance at getting what they want. The presence of a deal breaker, however, helps both parties in a negotiation know how to maneuver and help determine each other's pain points.

For example, a company attempting to merge with a competitor may discover that the competitor will only let the merger proceed if a certain number of its employees are kept on board with the new venture. This may be a deal breaker for the acquiring company.

Dealing Desk

In foreign currency markets, the location of a financial institution's forex dealers. Since the forex market is open around-the-clock, many institutions have dealing desks around the world. Dealing desks can also be found outside the foreign exchange markets, such as in banks and finance companies, to execute trades in securities.

 

The term "desk" may be a bit of a misnomer, given its connotation of a table shared by a couple of traders. Large financial institutions often have dealing facilities that are staffed by hundreds of dealers. In a large institution, major currencies, such as the euro and yen, may have several dealing desks staffed by dozens of traders who specialize in these currencies.

Deal Flow

The rate at which business proposals and investment pitches are being received by financiers such as investment bankers and venture capitalists. Rather than a rigid quantitative measure, the rate of deal flow is somewhat qualitative and is meant to provide an indication of whether business is good or bad. The state of the economy has a significant influence on the level of deal flow. Economic expansion and robust equity markets will usually generate healthy deal flow for most financiers, while a recession and/or sluggish equity markets may generate some deal flow for only the most established players.

 

Deal flow can comprise many different types of proposals: venture funding, private placements, syndications, initial public offerings (IPO), mergers and acquisitions. While large investment banks can handle most of these activities, specialist financiers such as venture capitalists and angel investors will generally focus on deal flow only in their area of expertise.

Point to Point Encryption

Point-to-point encryption ensures cardholder data is protected from card swipe all the way through to the processing banks. State of the art encrypted magnetic card readers scan and encrypt cardholder information prior to performing an electronic payment transaction.

Lump-Sum Amount

A one-time payment for the total or partial value of an asset. A lump-sum payment is usually taken in lieu of recurring payments that would otherwise be received over a period of time. The value of a lump-sum payment is generally less than the sum of all payments that the party would otherwise receive, since the party paying the lump-sum payment is being asked to provide more funds up front than it otherwise would have been required to.

Lump-sum payments are often used in structured products that typically provide payouts over a series of times, such as annuities or other retirement vehicles. This type of payment is also used in structured settlements, and in some corporate retirement packages, in which the company will incentivize employees to retire early by providing all retirement funds up front.

Payment-In-Kind PIK

A financial instrument that pays interest or dividends to investors of bonds, notes or preferred stock with additional debt or equity instead of cash. Payment-in-kind securities are attractive to companies who would prefer not to make cash outlays. They are often used in leveraged buyouts. Payment-in-kind securities are a type of mezzanine financing, where they have characteristics indicative of debt and equities. They tend to pay a relatively high rate of interest but are considered risky. Investors who can afford to take above-average risks, such as private equity investors and hedge funds, are most likely to invest in payment-in-kind securities.  

Also, the use of a good or service as payment instead of cash. A farmhand who is given "free" room and board instead of receiving an hourly wage in exchange for helping out on the farm is an example of payment-in-kind. 

Mobile Payment

Money rendered for a product or service through a portable electronic device such as a cell phone, smartphone or PDA. Mobile payment technology can also be used to send money to friends or family members.

Mobile payments first became popular in Asia and Europe before becoming more common in the United States and Canada. They can be sent (most popularly) by text message, by passing a smartphone screen displaying a special barcode under a stores barcode scanner or by using a phone to take a photo of a check and sending it. The cost of the purchase may be added to the consumers phone bill or paid by credit or debit card.

Digital Cash

Digital cash aims to mimic the functionality of paper cash, by providing such properties of anonymity and transferability of payment. Digital cash is intended to be implemented data which can be copied, stored, or given as payment (for example, attached to an email message, or via a USB stick, Bluetooth, etc.).  Just like paper currency and coins, digital cash is intended to represent value because it is backed by a trusted third party (namely, the government and the banking industry).

Alimony Payment

A periodic pre-determined sum awarded to a spouse or former spouse following a separation or divorce. Alimony is an obligation to make payments for support or maintenance; an alimony payment is the actual sum paid to fulfill the obligation. A decree or court order outlines the alimony payment structure and requirements.

 

When a married couple becomes legally separated or divorced, a court may determine the legal obligation of one of the individuals to provide money to the other to provide the type of financial support to which he or she has become accustomed to throughout the life of the marriage. In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service permits alimony payments to be deductible by the payer, and requires the recipient to include the alimony payments as income. Child support payments are separate from alimony payments.

Electronic Payments Network - EPN

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An electronic automated clearing house (ACH) that serves as the sole ACH for the private sector in the United States. The Electronic Payments Network handles numerous types of credit transfers, such as payroll payments, dividends, etc., as well as debit transfers, such as loan payments and insurance premiums.   In the modern financial marketplace, the EPNs use of electronic transfers of money has increased the efficiency and timeliness of business transactions. If you are paid by direct deposit by your employer, chances are the EPN is involved in the transaction.

Graduated Payment Mortgage

A type of fixed-rate mortgage in which the payment increases gradually from an initial low base level to a desired, final level. Typically, the payments will grow 7-12% annually from their initial base payment amount until the full payment is reached.

 

In a graduated payment mortgage, only the low initial rate is used to qualify the buyer, which allows many people who might not otherwise qualify for a mortgage to own a home. This type of mortgage payment system may be optimal for young homeowners as their income levels gradually rise to meet higher mortgage payments.

Restitution Payments

The payment of punitive damages that are owed as a result of wrongdoing or neglect. Restitution payments are an attempt to restore a person to a previous financial condition that should have persisted for the improper actions of another person or entity. Restitution payments are usually paid according to a schedule dictated by the court, but often will not begin until after the defendant/payer has been released from prison, if jail time is also served.

 

Some restitution payments are tax free, but payers cannot deduct restitution payments by donating them to a qualified charity.

Smishing

Smishing is a technique used by criminals to steal bank or credit card information using text messages. In such an incident, the mobile device user receives a fake text message that appears to be from a bank. The text message may request that the consumer call a phone number to provide card or account information to a criminal posing as a bank employee.

Facilitating Payment

A financial payment that may constitute a bribe and that is made with the intention of expediting an administrative process. A facilitating payment is a payment made to a public or government official that acts as incentive for the official to complete some action or process expeditiously, to the benefit of the party making the payment.

In general, a facilitating payment is made to smooth the progress of a service to which the payer is legally entitled, without making such a payment. In some countries, these payments are considered normal, whereas in other countries, facilitating payments are prohibited by law and considered bribes. Also called facilitation payments.

Down Payment

A type of payment made in cash during the onset of the purchase of an expensive good/service. The payment typically represents only a percentage of the full purchase price; in some cases it is not refundable if the deal falls through. Financing arrangements are made by the purchaser to cover the remaining amount owed to the seller. Making a down payment and then paying the rest of the price through installments is a method that makes expensive assets more affordable for the typical person.

 

For example, because houses are extremely expensive assets, home buyers typically pay down payments that equal 5-25% of the total value of a home. The remaining 75-95% of the price will be covered by a bank or other financial institutions through a mortgage loan.

Payment Shock

The risk that a loan's scheduled future periodic payments may increase substantially. Payment shock can be the result of several things, including the expiration of an initial or temporary start interest rate (sometimes known as a teaser rate), the end of a fixed-interest rate period, the end of an interest-only payment period, an increase in an adjustable-rate mortgage's fully indexed interest rate or the recasting of a payment option ARM.

 

Many popular mortgage products, such as payment option ARMs, carry a great deal of payment-shock risk. Consumers are drawn to these mortgages because of the relatively low initial monthly payments they offer. All financial decisions, including the choice of a mortgage, should be made by carefully considering the risk versus the reward. Risks must be identified and measured through insightful analysis. When risks, such as payment shock, are recognized and measured, they can be managed or avoided.

Payment Option ARM

A monthly adjusting adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) which allows the borrower to choose between several monthly payment options: a 30 or 40-year fully amortizing payment, a 15-year fully amortizing payment, an interest-only payment, a minimum payment or any amount greater than the minimum payment. 

The minimum payment option is calculated based on an initial temporary start interest rate. While this temporary start interest rate is in effect, this is the only payment option available. It is a fully amortizing payment. After the temporary start interest rate expires, the minimum payment amount remains a monthly payment option; however, whenever a payment is made which is less than the scheduled interest-only payment, deferred interest is created.

Audio Response Unit (ARU)

An ARU (also known as a voice authorization, capture and deposit) allows the manual keyed entry and subsequent authorization of a credit card over a cellular or land-line telephone. With this method a merchant typically imprints their customer's card with an imprinter to create a customer receipt and merchant copy, then process the transaction instantaneously over the phone.

Currency Depreciation

A decrease in the level of a currency in a floating exchange rate system due to market forces. Currency depreciation can occur due to any number of reasons – economic fundamentals, interest rate differentials, political instability, risk aversion among investors and so on. Countries with weak economic fundamentals such as chronic current account deficits and high rates of inflation generally have depreciating currencies.

Currency depreciation, if orderly and gradual, improves a nation’s export competitiveness and may improve its trade deficit over time. But abrupt and sizeable currency depreciation may scare foreign investors who fear the currency may fall further, and lead to them pulling portfolio investments out of the country, putting further downward pressure on the currency.