Glossary

IRS tax form that reports on income earned from sources other than wages, salary, or tips (for which the W-2 is used). Institutions issue 1099’s for money paid as interest, dividends, etc.

Every financial institution has a nine-digit code to identify itself for financial transactions (can be found printed on the bottom of checks) The American Bankers Association (ABA) developed the system in 1910 to facilitate the sorting, bundling, and delivery of paper checks to the drawer's (check writer's) bank for debit to the drawer's account.

Automated Clearing House. In the US, the ACH Network is the national automated clearing house (ACH) for electronic funds transfers. The ACH payment rail manages ACH inbound and outbound payments sent through the FedACH payment system.

In Cross River, ACH refers to our payment product that uses ACH.

Use to describe a demand deposit, savings, other asset accounts, or an extension of open -ended credit from which a customer is able to transact.

Example

Examples of account types include: savings, CDs, credit card

Account Funding Transaction.

General function:

Pulls funds from an account and uses them to fund a non-merchant account, such as that of an end-consumer. For example, load a credit, debit, or prepaid card, top up a digital wallet, or fund a P2P money transfer.

Cross River benefits:

Through our Card Rails and Merchant Acquiring product, Cross River enables partners to originate pull payments from debit cards. This provides a convenient and cost-effective method to deliver and receive card payments. This automated payment solution saves time, improves cash flow, and minimizes risk exposure, while ensuring security and privacy of financial information.

An allowlist is always a list of entities who are allowed to do something. In Cross River this could be a list of:

Anti-Money Laundering. (See Money Laundering below).History:- In the 1980s, the war on drugs led governments again to turn to money laundering rules in an attempt to track and seize the proceeds of drug crimes in order to catch the organizers and individuals running drug empires. 

The September 11 attacks in 2001, which led to the Patriot Act in the U.S. and similar legislation worldwide, led to a new emphasis on money laundering laws to combat terrorism financing.

Application Programming Interface. A software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. An API is a tool that allow developers to access data and interact with external software components in response to a request.

An acquirer reference number, or ARN, is a unique number created in credit or debit card transactions when it transfers from the merchant’s bank through the payment processor, and to the cardholder’s bank.

Banking as a Service. Offering banking services to customers.

Business Application Identifier. This is a two-character code that identifies the intended use of a push payment. It determines the data carried in the message, the limits and economics that may apply to the transaction, and the sending and/or receiving issuer may use it to make an authorization decision.

A bank rail is how funds are transferred from one account to another. Examples of rails include ACH, Instant Payments, and Wires.

Also called a payment rail.

A natural person or other legal entity who derives money or other benefits from something.  Usually used to indicate a person who receives distributions from a trust, will or life insurance policy. 

It can also refer to a recipient of a payment.

Example

Jane is the beneficiary of her husband’s life insurance policy.

Person who has a certain level of ownership in a business (an entity customer). Common use case would be creating accounts for small businesses, each beneficial owner (someone with 20% or more ownership in the company) must have their identity verified for the account to be opened.

Example

The beneficial owner of the land will have a right to the income from the property. 

Pertaining to payment cards. Business identifier. a unique number assigned by Visa to a financial institution.

Customers flagged by the system and prohibited from opening accounts. These customers are reported to the appropriate regulatory authority.

Use book transfer not internal transfer to describe the transfer of funds between two accounts that exist in COS (clients need permission to initiate a book transfer).

Example

We will assume any fees, costs or charges incurred in carrying out the book transfer.

Use to describe a loan customer. Can be a consumer or entity (In the days before we sell the loan on, the borrower is our customer). 

Example

Once approved for the loan via the MPL, the funds are transferred directly via Arix, to the borrower.

A client is a business who has a direct contractual relationship with

CRB to whom we provide financial products and services. 

Specific to card management in COS, the Configuration ID refers to a specific configuration of a card product.

A consumer is a customer who uses the client’s services for personal use (non-business). The term can have regulatory significance. 

Example

If the consumer is not automatically approved, their account is sent to the AML team for further due diligence and decisioning. 

Cross River Bank Operating System

Debt that is incurred or allowed to be incurred. i.e. a loan or the amount a customer is permitted to spend on a credit card

The act of adding/transferring funds to an account, opposite of debit an account.

Example

Interest will be compounded daily and will be credited to the account monthly.

A customer is the ultimate benefactor of the products/services CRB offers. Use customer when referring to CRB customers and our partners’ customers. Do not use client or consumer in this context.

Example

Each customer will receive an email with the URL to access the account.

A unique GUID/UUID for a customer record. A customer record is the basic record needed in COS to perform certain actions.

The act of removing/transferring funds from an account, opposite of credit an account.

Example

This is used to push funds to one COS account and debit from another account

To pay out funds (on behalf of a client to a third party).

Example

Once approved for the loan via the MPL, the funds are disbursed directly via Arix, to the beneficiary.medical service provider

The location in a communication channel through which an API accesses the resources required to perform its function.

A non individual that can enter into contracts with CRB.

Example

A legal entity includes trusts, estates, LLCs, corporations, non-profits, and all organizational structures that engage in business with CRB.

Enums, short for enumerations, are a special data type that represents a group of named constants. They are used to define a set of possible values for a variable, making the code more readable and maintainable.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is one of two agencies that provide deposit insurance to depositors in U.S. depository institutions.

In COS, CRB charges our banking partners fees, our banking partners also charge fees to their customers.

Examples of some of these fees 

COS → partners: monthly platform access fees

Partners →customers: monthly account maintenance fees, returned ACH fees

In Arix, there are several different fees, accounting fees, origination fees, merchant fees. 

Example

To offset the costs involved with originating loans, the bank charges its MPL partners an origination fee.

A distinct functionality that adds value to a product but is not sold independently.

Example

Remote deposit capture (RDC) would not be sold without a DDA bank account.

Fedwire (formerly known as the Federal Reserve Wire Network) is a real-time gross settlement funds transfer system operated by the United States Federal Reserve Banks that allows financial institutions to electronically transfer funds between its more than 9,289 participants (as of March 19, 2009).

Financial Institution. A company/organization that provides various financial services, acting as intermediaries between savers and borrowers. They are essential for the functioning of the economy, as they help manage the flow of money, enabling individuals and businesses to save, invest, and access credit. Financial institutions facilitate transactions and provide essential services

Global provider of financial services technology: https://www.fiserv.com/

Use for money that has been set aside for a specific purpose.

Example

Funds are typically made available within minutes to hours.

The path the funds take to get from one account to another

A GL (general ledger) account is a parent account belonging to an institution or organization. A GL account at CRB records all transactions for that account. The transactions are related to accounting elements, including assets, liabilities, equity, revenues, expenses, gains, and losses. See also Subledger.

Globally Unique Identifier used to identify information such as transactions, customers, rails, and others.

After a loan is made, the funds are either Held For Investment or Held For Sale.

The clause in a commercial loan that puts aside a portion of the loan until a milestone is reached.

Identity and Access Management. IAM gives secure access to company resources like emails, databases, data, and applications to verified entities, ideally with a bare minimum of interference. The goal is to manage access so that the right people can do their jobs and the wrong people, like hackers, are denied entry.

Internation ACH Transactions: IAT was established by Nacha as an extension of ACH. IAT is designed for US banks (which payers must supply adequate IAT information) to monitor and report international transactions for OFAC compliance.

Check processing for COS checks deposited at other banks.

Internal Rate of Return. A measure of an investment’s expected future rate of return and should not be confused with the actual investment return achieved, of an historical investment. The term internal refers to the fact that the calculation excludes external factors, such as the risk-free rate, inflation, the cost of capital, or various financial risks.

The ISO standard for electronic data interchange between financial institutions.

Know Your Business (KYB) is a regulatory and legal requirement for banks and other related institutions to identify and verify the identity of their clients.

Know Your Customer (KYC) is the mandatory process of identifying and verifying the identity of your client when opening an account and periodically over time. Banks must make sure that their clients are genuinely who they claim to be.

Use loan documents when describing Arix documentation. Don't use loan paperwork or loan documentation.

Example

Our partner then sends the loan documents directly to CRB.

Loan Tape denotes an electronic file or set of files that captures lending product data from a financial firm's systems. (Also: Loan Data Tape, Loan Exposures Tape, Servicing Tape, "Loan-by-Loan File"). It is typically a database extract that needs to be specified in detail (the "scope" of the extract) or spreadsheet.

The term likely originates in magnetic data tapes used in earlier generations of computer storage. A loan tape can be considered as a one-time snapshot of a subset of an organization's Credit Portfolio Information.

Use to describe the entity who initiates payments to a recipient. Do not use vendor or seller in this context. (P2C)

Example

The merchant sends a request to transfer funds to a registered card.

Memo post, or memo posting, is a term used in traditional computerized banking environments where batch processing is employed. A memo post represents a temporary credit or debit transaction/entry made to an account for which the complete posting to update the balance will be done as part of EOD (end-of-day) batch processing.

Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origins of money obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transfers or commercial transactions. The overall scheme of this process returns the "clean" money to the launderer in an obscure and indirect way. One problem of criminal activities is accounting for the proceeds without raising the suspicion of law enforcement agencies. Interesting fact: The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that the amount of money laundered globally in one year is "2–5% of global GDP, or $800bn – $2tn in current US dollars.

The movement of money from one account to another or an account to a fund.

Marketplace Lender. An MPL offers loans to higher risk individuals who would otherwise be turned down for a loan. They approach Cross River with the relevant documentation and information to facilitate the loan of the money. The MPL itself does not lend the money. Only a bank can do the lending, and Cross River is a bank.

The National Automated Clearing House Association manages the development, administration, and governance of the ACH Network, the backbone for the electronic movement of money and data in the United States.

Short for narrative. Part of the ISO 200022 standard.

Notification of Change (NOC) is a notification from the ACH network that something about a bank account has changed. For example, if you as a PayPal user submit a payment for which the name on the bank account has changed, then PayPal receives a NOC that lists the corrected name.

Original credit transaction.

General function:

A real-time payment method that enables the direct transfer of funds to cardholders around the globe. Using the push payment capabilities of Visa OCT and MasterCard MoneySend services, cardholders receive funds directly on the account linked to their card. In the Visa network, OCT sends payments via a ‘push' mechanism specifically over the VisaNet electronic payments network to specific card-based account holders. In turn, payments are credited into those cardholder’s accounts.

Cross River benefits:

Through our Card Rails and Merchant Acquiring product, Cross River enables partners to originate push payments to debit cards, resulting in a dramatic reduction in processing time. The wait for transaction approval drops from days to literally minutes, providing cardholders with access to their funds almost instantly.

Originating Depository Financial Institution

This term is used in connection with ACH Network (ACH). In the ACH flow, the ODFI acts as the interface between the Federal Reserve or ACH network and the originator of the transaction.

The US Office of Foreign Assets Control is responsible for administration and enforcement of economic and trade sanctions for the US Treasury Department.

OFAC maintains several lists of persons who are blocked under OFAC sanctions. US banks are required to check the OFAC lists every time a customer comes to open an account.

Use to describe the person who is initiating a transaction.

Example

Each originator can have many profiles from which they originate transactions.

Primary Account Number. A primary account number refers to a 14-, 15-, 16-, or even up to 19-digit number that serves as a unique identifier on credit cards, debit cards, and other types of payment cards. The first set of numbers in a PAN identify the industry, processing network, and specific financial institution that issued it. The remaining numbers (except for the very last one) identify the individual cardholder. The last number is a check digit, which is used to verify the card number's accuracy. The PAN is usually embossed or laser-printed on the front of the card.

Use to describe the entity that contracts with CRB for services. A client is not necessarily a partner (they are only a partner if we service their customers as well).

Example

The partner must then send all the required loan documents to Arix.

A unique GUID or UUID that Cross RIver assigns to the partner for use in COS. Partners cannot generate their own partnerId.

The digital payment environment has made the terms payments and funds more popular as cash and money becomes increasingly dated.

Example

When we send money from a COS account to another bank, this is called a Push payment. If we were to take money from an account held at another bank, that would be a Pull payment.

A payment rail is the method by which funds are transferred from one account to another. Examples of rails include ACH, RTP, and wires.

Example

Depending on the rail type, funding results might be immediate or take up to a few days.

Also called a bank rail.

Payment card industry data security standard

Procurement Credit Card. Corporate credit cards designed to simplify the purchasing process for businesses, enhancing efficiency and control over spending.

Point of Sales system. A POS system, or point-of-sale system, is a combination of hardware and software that enables businesses to accept payments, track sales, manage inventory, and more from a single platform.

A distinct offering of features, that can be sold independently or as part of a solution. 

Example

ACH, Wires, Bank Account, RTP

Indicates the banking product being applied when creating a card or account. The product ID is specific to a partner. No two partners use the same Product ID even if they are using the identical configurations for, for example, a card.

A pull is initiated by the receiver of the funds, drawn from the sender paying the funds. 

Example

Using this card, you can pull payment from your account.

Used to describe the act of sending funds to a recipient.

Example

This service will allow funds to be pushed into a 3rd party account via their debit card.

A rail is the method by which payments are pushed to the payment network. 

Some examples of the rails at CRB:

Example

Depending on the rail type, funding results might be immediate or take up to a few days.

Receiving Depository Financial Institution (RDFI) is a financial institution qualified to receive ACH (Automated Clearing House) entries. These institutions should abide by the NACHA (National Automated Clearing House Association) Rules. The RDFI interlinks the Receiver's account with the Cards Association network.

Use to describe the consumer or entity who receives the funds.

Example

The recipient receives funds immediately in their account.

In the context of payments, this is a unique

Cross River identifier. The first character of the ID represents the payment rail. For example, a Checks reference ID begins with “C”, a Wires reference ID begins with “W”.

Remote Payment and Presentment Service (RPPS) is an electronic payment processing and presentment hub used by Mastercard. It includes routing and settlement within 24 hours, risk management procedures, and automatic editing of customer accounts.

Real Time Payments. The RTP domain integrates payments between banks through “The Clearing House”. An RTP payment is near instant. Within a matter of seconds, the money will be in the receiver account.

US Small Business Association

Use to describe the person or entity who sends the funds

Example

The sender's bank will charge the sender a fee for the payment order.

Refers to the partnership between a borrower and the partner who is servicing their loan.

Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons List.

The OFAC list was developed as a result of the September 11th attacks, and records the names of known criminals and terrorists. In addition to those criminals, the list may also contain the names of diplomats. US banks are required to check the OFAC list every time a customer comes to open an account.

CRB opens a master account for a partner (top-level client), if the partner then opens an account for his customers, this account is called a subledger. Outside of CRB, this subledger is often referred to as a virtual account.

Example

Credit transfers can be sent from deposit accounts and their associated subledgers.

In API endpoints for subledgers, “subaccount” is used instead of “subledger”. For instance, GET /v1/dda/subaccounts.

The Clearing House (TCH) is a private banking association and payments company owned by 24 of the largest banks.

The movement of funds from one account to another or an account to a fund

Wage and tax statement form