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      Payment Terms and Definitions

      Familiarize yourself with the common payment terms used throughout the StudioPay platform and the payment industry.

      Overview

      Managing payments is vital to ensure proper monitoring and execution of your business transactions—but it may get confusing with all the terminology and jargon used in payment systems. Review and refresh your memory with these payment terms. 

      StudioPay-Specific Terms

      A glossary of common terms used throughout the StudioPay platform and articles.

      • Created: The date when the resource object was originally created.  
      • Creator: The login ID of the user that created the resource object. 
      • Disbursement: A disbursement is when Payrix sends an ACH transfer to an entity’s (Merchant or Referrer) bank account. An entity withdrawing (paying out) from their Available Balance.
      • Disbursement Adjustments: Moving funds from one entity account to another. Adjustments appear as fee credits or debits under the Disbursement Details section of Withdrawal Transactions. 
      • Disbursement Entries: A breakdown of the line items within a disbursement. This is available on the Disbursement Details page to understand what made up the disbursement total based on income and expenses. 
      • Disbursement Fee Refunds: Process of refunding the cost of a fee to an entity. They may appear as fee credits under the Disbursement Details section of Withdrawal Transactions. 
      • Disbursement Reserves: Indicates money placed into reserve status by the Facilitator and/or Referrer’s platform requirements. Reserves appear as Fee credits or debits under the Disbursement Details section of Withdrawal Transactions. 
      • Disbursement Rollovers: An account balance with a value that is less than one penny (ex. $0.005) or having a balance greater than one penny while also having a Rollover (ex. $100.005 — one hundred dollars with a halfpenny rollover).
      • FBO: A For Benefit Of account, allows a company to manage funds on behalf of—or for the benefit of—one or more of their users, without assuming legal ownership of the account.
      • Group/Org: A collection of entities where you can configure fees, decisions, and parameters that apply to all entities in the group. 
      • Merchant: An entity, most commonly the designer, that can process transactions and has been approved to use StudioPay.  
      • Referrer/Vendor: A partner entity, such as Studio Designer, that receives fees collected from merchants.

      Note: At this time, StudioPay is in its closed beta phase and is only available to a small group of designers. You can expect the official release later this year.

      Industry-Specific Terms

      A glossary of common terms you'll come across when managing payments.

      • Available Balance: The balance of an entity account recorded in the system displaying the positive or negative balance for fees and/or transactions that have been collected. 
      • Chargeback: A chargeback begins when a cardholder initiates the process by contacting the Card issuer.  
      • Convenience Fee: A fee implemented by a business for the ability to pay for a product or service using an alternative/non-traditional payment method.
      • Dispute: A claim filed by a cardholder or issuing bank, and it may be processed in one or multiple stages in order to receive a resolution. 
      • Gross Settlement: A way of processing financial transactions where each transaction is settled individually and immediately, without being combined with other transactions. This means that the full amount of each transaction is transferred from the sender's account to the recipient's account without any deductions or adjustments, meaning that payments in the Studio Designer app will match the payments received by the Designer in StudioPay. 
      • Payment Processors: Along with the acquiring bank, a relationship with a processor is necessary to operate as a payment facilitator. The processor is responsible for processing and settling the transactions that are initiated by the payment facilitator’s sub-merchants. 
      • Payout/Withdrawal Schedule: The payout or withdrawal schedule determines when an entity will be funded - whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, or specifies a percentage or fixed amount to be funded. 
      • Refund: Reimbursement issued by a merchant to customers who are dissatisfied with the goods or services they purchased. 
      • Retrieval: Usually a precursor to actual chargeback where the issuer is requesting documentation, such as receipts, terms and services, or proof of purchase. The chargeback cycle of Retrieval will not change and there is no financial impact on the merchant.
      • Surcharge: A calculated fee requested by a Referrer for credit card purchases made by a customer. A surcharge covers the credit card fees associated with the transaction, as closely aligned to interchange costs as possible.   
      • Transaction: The movement of money between a cardholder and a merchant to purchase a good or service. 
      • Void Transactions: A transaction that is canceled before the money is transferred and settled through a consumer's debit or credit card account.