Glossary

The words behind the money.

Short, plain definitions of the terms that appear on payment confirmations, invoices and compliance requests.

A

ACH

ACH is how American businesses pay each other locally, and the cheapest way to be paid in US dollars. It only reaches accounts inside the United States, so a US customer offering to ACH you is offering to pay a US account, not one anywhere else.\n\nIt is usually slower than a wire and takes a few days, and an ACH payment can be taken back by the payer within set windows. That is worth knowing before you ship against it.

B

Beneficial owner

Your beneficial owners are the actual people who ultimately own or control the company, no matter how many holding entities sit in between. You will be asked to name them when an account opens.\n\nThe usual threshold is 25% ownership, and anyone who controls the company without holding that much is captured too. An ownership chart that stops at another company does not answer the question, and the file cannot move on until it does.

C

Correspondent bank

A correspondent bank is a bank that passes a payment on for another bank, because most banks do not hold accounts with most other banks. Your transfer may cross two or three of them without your choosing any.\n\nThis is why international payments cost what they cost and arrive when they arrive: each bank in the chain takes its own cut and runs its own checks. It is also why a payment can land short. Fewer banks in the path means cheaper and faster.

E

Enhanced due diligence

Enhanced due diligence is a deeper round of checks, applied when your file looks higher-risk: complex ownership, a politically exposed connection, a higher-risk country, or a business description that does not match the evidence.\n\nIn practice it means more documents, more questions about where your money comes from, and a longer wait. It is a risk classification, not an accusation, and answering plainly is what closes it.

I

IBAN

Your IBAN is the international format of your bank account number. It is what you put on an invoice so a customer or supplier can pay you without guessing, and in Europe it is normally all they need.\n\nThe digits are arranged so a mistyped account is caught before money moves, which is the main reason it exists. Note that an IBAN alone does not make your account reachable by SEPA: many countries outside Europe use IBANs too.

K

KYB

KYB is the business version of an identity check: proving your company legally exists, what it actually trades, and who ultimately owns it. It is what stands between you and an open account.\n\nMost applications stall on ownership, because the chain has to be followed to named people, not to another holding company. Have the ownership documents ready before you start.\n\nBe specific about what you do. A vague answer such as general trading gets nowhere; what you buy, from whom, what you sell, to whom and roughly how much a month is the answer that moves a file.

KYC

KYC is the identity check you go through before an account opens: a document, a face, and a screening against sanctions lists.\n\nYou cannot skip it, and neither can anyone regulated. It is the reason onboarding needs a passport or ID and a few minutes of your time rather than a form alone.

L

Lifting fee

A lifting fee is a deduction an intermediary bank takes out of a payment as it passes through, rather than billing anyone separately. It is the most common reason a payment arrives short of the invoice.\n\nYou will not see it itemised. The sender can prevent it by choosing to pay the charges themselves instead of letting them come out of the transfer. If you are the one receiving, that is what to ask for.

M

Money services business

A money services business is the regulated Canadian category for non-banks that move money or exchange currency. It has to register with FINTRAC, run a compliance programme, verify who its customers are, and report as the law requires.\n\nIt is not a bank: it does not take deposits, and customer money is held separately rather than deposited. TrillioniPay is a Canadian FINTRAC-registered money services business.

N

Nostro and vostro

Nostro and vostro are two names for the same account, from opposite sides: your money held at another bank is ours to you and yours to them.\n\nYou will probably never need the words. They matter because they explain what an international transfer really is, a series of moves between banks' accounts with each other, which is where the delays and the fees come from.

P

PCI DSS

PCI DSS is the security standard for companies that handle card data. Level 1 is the tier for the largest processing volumes, assessed annually by an independent auditor.\n\nWhen you see the badge, ask two questions: which company in the stack actually holds it, and when was it last assessed. A provider's certification is not its customer's.\n\nTrillioniPay's platform provider holds PCI DSS Level 1. TrillioniPay does not hold it and does not present it as its own.

Purpose code

A purpose code tells the destination country what a payment is for: goods, services, a family transfer, and so on. Many central banks require one for payments in and out.\n\nA missing or wrong code is a common reason a payment is held, returned or delayed at the receiving end. The requirement belongs to the destination market, not the sending bank, which is why the same payment can clear into one country and stall in another. Get it right before you send.

R

Reachability

Reachability decides whether a payment can reach a particular account at all. An account is SEPA-reachable only if the institution holding it has joined the scheme and sits inside its area.\n\nHolding euros is not enough, and neither is having an IBAN. This is why a customer's euro transfer to a bank outside the area bounces with a message about the beneficiary, however hard you try.

Routing number

A routing number identifies a bank in the United States. Paired with an account number, it is how a US domestic payment is addressed.\n\nThe US does not use IBANs, so if a US customer asks for your routing number, they are trying to pay you domestically. If you do not have one, that is the moment to explain what account details you can give them instead.

S

Safeguarding

Safeguarding means customer money is held in accounts kept apart from the company's own operating funds, so the two stay distinguishable if the company ever fails.\n\nIt is not deposit insurance. A bank deposit is backed by a guarantee scheme up to a limit; safeguarded money is not, and no scheme stands behind it. So the useful question is not whether funds are safeguarded, but how and where.

SEPA

SEPA is the single euro payments area: the system that makes a euro transfer between participating countries behave like a domestic one.\n\nThat is the commercial point. Nothing is deducted along the way, because there are no intermediary banks in the path, so the amount sent is the amount received; transfers usually land the same day; and a cross-border euro payment must be priced like a domestic one. It covers euro payments within the participating European area.\n\nAn account outside that area cannot receive a SEPA transfer at any price.

SWIFT

SWIFT is how banks send international payment instructions to each other. If you pay or get paid outside Europe and North America, this is almost certainly the route your money travels.\n\nWhat it means for you: SWIFT transfers reach almost anywhere, but the payment usually passes through other banks, each of which can take a fee and run its own checks, so it can cost more and take a day or two to arrive. Ask your bank to send the full amount and to cover the charges if you need a precise sum to land.

V

Verification of Payee

Verification of Payee is the check that compares the name you type with the name registered to the account before a payment goes out, showing a match, a near match or a mismatch.\n\nIt is becoming standard across the euro area and it is free. For a business it changes something practical: customers paying account details registered in your own name see a clean match, while shared details in a provider's name raise a warning on every payment, and a warning is what makes people stop.

Virtual IBAN

A virtual IBAN is an account identifier that points payments to another account. Banks have used the mechanism for decades.\n\nWhat matters commercially is not that it is virtual, it is whose name it is registered in. Details in your own company's name show a clean name match when a customer pays you; details in a provider's name show a mismatch warning. TrillioniPay calls these named account details, because the industry word covers both.

W

Wire transfer

A wire transfer is a payment sent one at a time rather than in a batch, which is how most international transfers work.\n\nTwo things follow. It is generally final once credited, so the payer cannot simply take it back. And you are charged for each one, which is why it costs more than a local batch payment. With a new counterparty, that finality is exactly what you are paying for.