Dictionary¶
A collection of various terms and 3rd parties used within Majority. Partly the ubiquitous language of Majority. Extra useful for people new to banking and/or Majority.
Whenever you encounter a unfamiliar word / term, feel free to add it to this list.
General Terms¶
MTU (Mobile Top Up)¶
A mobile phone top-up is where you add credit to your mobile number so that you
can make calls, text or access the internet.
ACH (Automated Clearing House)¶
An ACH payment is a type of electronic bank-to-bank payment.
An ACH is an electronic fund transfer made between banks and credit unions across
what is called the Automated Clearing House network. ACH is used for all kinds of
fund transfer transactions, including direct deposit of paychecks and monthly debits
for routine payments.
A computer-based electronic network for processing transactions, usually domestic
low value payments, between participating financial institutions.
It may support both credit transfers and direct debits.[2][3] The ACH system is
designed to process batches of payments containing numerous transactions,
and it charges fees low enough to encourage its use for low value payments.
A network used for electronically moving money between bank accounts across the United States.
It's run by an organisation called Nacha (previously NACHA - National Automated Clearing House Association),
and may also be referred to as the ACH network or ACH scheme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_clearing_house
KYC (Know Your Customer)¶
KYC standards are designed to protect financial institutions
against fraud, corruption, money laundering and terrorist financing.
KYC is a set of processes that allow banks and other financial institutions to
confirm the identity of the organisations and individuals they do business with,
and ensures those entities are acting legally.
KYC involves several steps to:
- Establish customer identity
- Understand the nature of customers’ activities and qualify that the source of funds is legitimate
- Assess money laundering risks associated with customers
PAN (Permanent Account Number)¶
Permanent Account Number abbreviated as PAN is a unique 10-digit alphanumeric
number which is issued to taxpayers by the Income Tax Department.
You can apply for the number through Protean eGov Technologies Limited or UTIITSL.
The application can be made either online or offline.
The primary purpose of the PAN is to bring a universal identification to all
financial transactions and to prevent tax evasion by keeping track of monetary
transactions, especially those of high-net-worth individuals who can impact the economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_account_number
MSISDN (phone number)¶
A number uniquely identifying a subscription in a Global System for Mobile
communications or a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System mobile network.
It is the mapping of the telephone number to the subscriber identity module in
a mobile or cellular phone. This abbreviation has several interpretations,
the most common one being "Mobile Station International Subscriber Directory Number".
3DS (3-D Secure)¶
3-D Secure is a protocol designed to be an additional security layer for online
credit and debit card transactions. The name refers to the "three domains" which
interact using the protocol: the merchant/acquirer domain, the issuer domain,
and the interoperability domain.
The basic concept of the protocol is to tie the financial authorization process
with online authentication. This additional security authentication is based on
a three-domain model (hence the "3-D" in the name). The three domains are:
- Acquirer domain (the bank and the merchant to which the money is being paid)
- Issuer domain (the card issuer)
- Interoperability Domain (the infrastructure provided by the card scheme, credit,
debit, prepaid or other types of a payment card, to support the 3-D Secure
protocol). It includes the Internet, merchant plug-in, access control server,
and other software providers.
The protocol uses XML messages sent over SSL connections with client authentication
(this ensures the authenticity of both peers, the server and the client, using digital certificates).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_Secure
CDE (Cardholder Data Environment)¶
A cardholder data environment (CDE) is a computer system or networked group of
IT systems that processes, stores and/or transmits cardholder data or sensitive
payment authentication data.
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) includes specific
requirements for securing electronic payment and authentication data residing
on all physical and virtual components in the CDE, including:
- Network components such as firewalls, switches, routers, access points,
network appliances, security appliances.
- Point-of-sale (POS) systems, such as payment terminals, cash registers,
card readers and other systems that intake payment card data from a customer at the time of a payment transaction.
- Servers including Web servers, application servers, database servers,
authentication servers, mail servers, proxy servers, network time protocol servers and domain name servers.
- All applications, both internal and external.
- Any virtual component, including virtual machines, virtual switches, virtual
routers, virtual appliances, virtual applications, virtual desktops and hypervisors.
- Third-party IT systems.
PSP - Payment service provider¶
CAC - Customer Acqusition Cost¶
How much we spent to acquire the user.
PAU - Paying Active User¶
Majority Specific / Internal¶
Hydra¶
Backoffice system. Ask for Hydra account access.
https://hydra.rebtel.com (prod)
https://hydra-01.rebtel.com (stage)
https://hydra-02.rebtel.com (dev)
Themis (Risk)¶
The Risk backend system
Closed Loop¶
Money sent within MAJORITY. Deprecated functionality
Feature flag¶
Feature flags turn features on / off. At Majority we implement them as standard config values.
3rd Parties¶
Galileo¶
Financial technology platform. Owned by SoFi Technologies, Inc. (SoFi)
Majority customer account data and transactions flow through this platform.
Program API
Add, modify and request customer account data.
Events API
Receive alerts that an action was taken on a customer's account.
Auth API
Actively participate in your customers' transaction approvals and denials.
Disputes API
Integrate the dispute process into your app or website to provide a seamless dispute experience.
External Trans API
Participate in the decisioning for approving and denying bill payments and ACH debits.
Snowflake¶
The data warehouse is built on the Snowflake db. Majority stores all kinds of analytics and business intelligence data inside.
Cloud-based data storage and analytics service. Snowflake services main features
are separation of storage and compute, on-the-fly scalable compute, data sharing,
data cloning, and third-party tools support in order to handle the demanding
needs of growing enterprises.
Load, integrate, analyze, and share data securely.
Looker¶
DW querying tool and shared dashboards.
Looker for Google Cloud Platform allows anyone in your business to quickly analyze
and find insights in your datasets. Looker makes it easy to build a data exploration
platform that makes your data accessible in a meaningful, intuitive way for your
entire organization.
Suricata¶
Suricata is a high performance, open source network analysis and
threat detection software used by most private and public organizations,
and embedded by major vendors to protect their assets.
Alloy¶
We use allow to validate KYC. Alloy is a gateway, they have internal providers.
They have a new integration.
Axiom¶
Axiom is the bank used by Galileo
Braze¶
Used for communication with customers. Campaigns, notifications, emails etc.
Repo: bank-braze
Fiserv¶
Provides financial technology services to clients across the financial services sector,
including: banks, thrifts, credit unions, securities broker dealers, mortgage,
insurance, leasing and finance companies, and retailers.
ProcessOut (PO)¶
Payment Analytics & Routing platform
Route transactions, analyze and report on your entire payment ecosystem and switch-on providers in one-click.
OFAC (The Office of Foreign Assets Control)¶
The Office of Foreign Assets Control is a financial intelligence and enforcement
agency of the U.S. Treasury Department. It administers and enforces economic and
trade sanctions in support of U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives.
Purpose:
OFAC screening involves checking entities against the denied party lists maintained
by the United States Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
Additionally, OFAC compliance can also include identifying sanctions and embargoes
placed on nations and political jurisdictions.
Ideology¶
Identity verification & fraud detection system / KYC. See Alloy for actual
external API used.
TaxJar¶
TaxJar is reimagining how businesses manage sales tax compliance. Our cloud-based platform automates the entire sales tax life cycle across all of your sales channels — from calculations and nexus tracking to reporting and filing. With innovative technology and award-winning support, we simplify sales tax compliance so you can grow with ease.
Branch.io¶
Flawless mobile linking and attribution.
Majority uses it to create referral links.
Vanta¶
Used for security compliance. E.g keeps track of vulnerbilitites reported, that all employees review relevant policies etc.
Plaid¶
Used for ACH?
Dwolla¶
Used for ACH?
Opsgenie¶
Atlassian tool we use to handle OnCall rotation and alerting.