Glossary

Game payments glossary

The terms you will meet in provider contracts, platform rules and tax guidance, each in a sentence and then in more detail.

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3-D Secure: The card networks' protocol for confirming that the real cardholder is paying at an online checkout, usually through a banking-app prompt or one-time code, which shifts fraud liability to the issuer.

Acquirer: The bank or licensed institution that holds the merchant's card-acceptance agreement, receives card payments through the networks and settles the money to the merchant.
Alternative billing: Letting players pay inside a mobile app through the studio's own payment provider, in place of or alongside Apple's or Google's billing, where the store allows it.
Anti-steering: App store rules that stop an app from telling players about other ways to pay outside the store, or from linking to them.
Authorization rate: The share of attempted card payments that the player's bank approves, which measures how many willing buyers your checkout turns into completed sales.

Chargeback: A forced reversal of a card payment, started by the player's bank when the cardholder disputes a charge, which takes the money back from the merchant and usually adds a fee.
Core Technology Commission: Apple's 5% commission on digital sales in EU apps distributed outside the App Store, which since 1 October 2026 has fully replaced the per-install Core Technology Fee.

Deemed supplier: A tax rule that treats a platform or intermediary taking part in a digital sale as the seller for VAT or sales tax, so it collects and pays the tax in place of the studio.
Digital wallet: A service such as Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal that stores a player's payment details and lets them pay with a tap or a login in place of typing a card number.
Direct-to-consumer (D2C): Selling currency, items and games to players through the studio's own channels, such as a web shop or in-app alternative payments, in place of an app store or platform checkout.
Dynamic currency conversion: A checkout option that lets a foreign cardholder pay in their home currency at a rate set on the merchant's side, so the conversion margin is paid by the cardholder.

Economic nexus: The US rule that a remote seller must collect a state's sales tax once its sales into that state pass a threshold, typically $100,000 a year, even with no office or staff there.
External purchase link entitlement: Apple's permission, granted on application, that lets an iOS app link to digital purchases on the developer's website in storefronts where steering is otherwise banned.

Friendly fraud: A chargeback filed by the real cardholder, or someone in their household, for a purchase they made or allowed, such as a child spending on a parent's card.
FX markup: The margin a payment provider adds to the market exchange rate when it converts a player's currency or your payout currency, sometimes charged once at checkout and again at payout.

Gross vs net revenue: The accounting judgement of whether a studio books the full price a player pays as revenue, with platform or provider fees as a cost, or only the amount it receives after those fees.

Interchange: The fee the merchant's bank pays the player's bank on every card payment, set by the card networks or capped by regulators and passed on to the merchant inside the processing price.
Interchange plus plus: A card pricing model where the PSP passes through the actual interchange and scheme fees on each payment and adds its own stated markup on top.
Issuer: The player's bank, which issued the card, approves or declines each payment, receives interchange and raises chargebacks on the cardholder's behalf.

Konbini: A Japanese payment method where the player gets a payment code at checkout and pays for it in cash at a convenience store counter.

Link-out: A button or link inside a mobile game that sends the player to the studio's web shop to buy, where platform rules allow it.
Local payment method: A payment method used mainly in one country or region, such as Pix in Brazil, iDEAL in the Netherlands, BLIK in Poland or konbini in Japan, offered alongside cards at checkout.

Mastercard ECM: Mastercard's monitoring tier for merchants with at least 100 chargebacks and a 1.5% chargeback rate in a month, which brings fines that rise each month the merchant stays in.
Merchant of record: The company that legally sells to the player, so its name is on the card statement and it carries the sales tax, chargebacks and consumer-law duties for each purchase.

One-Stop Shop (VAT OSS): The EU scheme that lets a seller of digital services declare and pay VAT for every EU country through one quarterly return in a single member state, in place of registering in each.

Payment facilitator: A company that contracts with an acquirer on behalf of many smaller sellers, called sponsored merchants, so they can accept cards without an acquiring agreement of their own.
Payment service provider: A company such as Stripe or Adyen that processes card and wallet payments for a studio, while the studio stays the legal seller and keeps the tax, fraud and dispute obligations.
Payout: The transfer of settled funds, minus fees, refunds, chargebacks and any reserve, from a payment provider or merchant of record to the studio's bank account.
PCI DSS: The card industry's security standard for any business that accepts, stores or transmits card data, which a studio selling through its own PSP has to validate every year.
Pix: Brazil's instant payment system, run by the central bank, which lets players pay straight from their bank account by scanning a QR code or copying a payment key.

Rolling reserve: A share of each period's sales that a payment provider or merchant of record holds back for a set time to cover later chargebacks and refunds, then releases on a rolling basis.

Scheme fees: Fees that Visa, Mastercard and other card networks charge for using their network, separate from interchange and passed through to the merchant by the acquirer.
Self-billing: An arrangement where the customer, such as a merchant of record, issues the invoice for the supplier's sale to it, so the studio does not invoice the MoR itself.
Settlement: The point at which money from approved payments lands in the seller's account balance, days after the sale with a PSP and often weeks with a merchant of record.
Strong customer authentication: The EEA legal requirement that most online card payments be confirmed with two independent factors, such as the player's phone plus a PIN or fingerprint, before the payment goes through.

Total cost of ownership (TCO): Everything a studio pays to sell direct, including processing, FX, disputes, tax compliance, fraud tools, payout fees, reserves and staff time, expressed as a share of player spend.

User choice billing: Google Play's program that shows players a choice between Google Play Billing and the studio's own payment system inside the app, with a lower service fee on the studio's option.

Virtual currency: An in-game currency such as gems, coins or V-Bucks that players buy with real money and spend on items inside the game.
Visa VAMP: Visa's single program for policing fraud and disputes, which flags merchants whose fraud reports plus disputes reach 1.5% of settled card-not-present transactions in the US, EU, Canada and Asia Pacific.

Web shop: A studio's own online store, outside the app stores, where players buy in-game currency, items and bundles that are credited to their game account.