Ever sat through a payments meeting and wondered if you accidentally joined a secret society that only speaks in acronyms? You’re not alone. Between PFaaS, NACHA, and VPA, the payments industry has more abbreviations than a teenager’s group chat. At Usio, we think payments should be simple—and that you shouldn’t need a PhD in Acronymology to understand them. So we rounded up 100+ of the most-used (and most-abused) abbreviations in payments, banking, and funds disbursement.
Some you’ll recognize. Some you’ll want to forget. A few you’ll wish you’d known earlier. And one or two might even make you look like the Smartest Person in the Zoom… aka SPINTZ. (But let’s be real—no one likes a SPINTZ.)
Core Payment Acronyms
- ACH – Automated Clearing House
- RTP – Real-Time Payments
- RTGS – Real-Time Gross Settlement
- EFT – Electronic Funds Transfer
- NACHA – National Automated Clearing House Association
- POS – Point of Sale
- PIN – Personal Identification Number
- EMV – Europay, Mastercard, Visa
- NFC – Near Field Communication
- CVV – Card Verification Value
- CNP – Card Not Present
- CP – Card Present
- PAN – Primary Account Number
- BIN – Bank Identification Number
- MCC – Merchant Category Code
- TID – Terminal ID
- MID – Merchant ID
- AVS – Address Verification System
- VPA – Virtual Payment Address
- DCC – Dynamic Currency Conversion
Banking & Transfers
- SWIFT – Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
- IBAN – International Bank Account Number
- BIC – Bank Identifier Code
- ABA – American Bankers Association (Routing Number)
- FEDWIRE – Federal Reserve Wire Network
- SEPA – Single Euro Payments Area
- CHAPS – Clearing House Automated Payment System
- FPS – Faster Payments Service
- NEFT – National Electronic Funds Transfer
- IMPS – Immediate Payment Service
- UPI – Unified Payments Interface
- FI – Financial Institution
- FBO – For Benefit Of
Compliance, Security & Regulation
- KYC – Know Your Customer
- AML – Anti-Money Laundering
- BSA – Bank Secrecy Act
- OFAC – Office of Foreign Assets Control
- SAR – Suspicious Activity Report
- CTR – Currency Transaction Report
- SSN – Social Security Number
- TIN – Taxpayer Identification Number
- PCI-DSS – Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
- GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation
- CCPA – California Consumer Privacy Act
- FATCA – Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act
- PSD2 – Revised Payment Services Directive
- FFIEC – Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council
- MSB – Money Services Business
Payments Biz & Tech Terms
- SaaS – Software as a Service
- PFaaS – PayFac as a Service (shameless Usio plug)
- ISV – Independent Software Vendor
- VAR – Value-Added Reseller
- PSP – Payment Service Provider
- ISO – Independent Sales Organization
- MPL – Merchant Processing Line
- TSP – Token Service Provider
- SDK – Software Development Kit
- API – Application Programming Interface
- UI/UX – User Interface / User Experience
- QA – Quality Assurance
- CRM – Customer Relationship Management
- ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning
Billing, Fees & Finance
- AR – Accounts Receivable
- AP – Accounts Payable
- MTD – Month To Date
- YTD – Year To Date
- ROI – Return On Investment
- TPC – Total Processing Cost
- NSF – Non-Sufficient Funds
- MICR – Magnetic Ink Character Recognition
- OPEX – Operating Expense
- CAPEX – Capital Expenditure
- FX – Foreign Exchange
- TT – Telegraphic Transfer
- DSO – Days Sales Outstanding
- B2B – Business to Business
- B2C – Business to Consumer
- C2B – Consumer to Business
- C2C – Consumer to Consumer
- MRR – Monthly Recurring Revenue
- ARR – Annual Recurring Revenue
- EBPP – Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment
Payroll & Disbursements
- P2P – Person to Person
- HSA – Health Savings Account
- FSA – Flexible Spending Account
- GPR – General Purpose Reloadable (Card)
- SSA – Social Security Administration
- W2 – Wage & Tax Statement
- 1099 – Independent Contractor Tax Form
- ADP – Automatic Data Processing
- EWA – Earned Wage Access
- OCC – Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
- SSAE – Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements
- SOC – System and Organization Controls
Crypto, Alt Payments & Innovation
- BTC – Bitcoin
- ETH – Ethereum
- NFT – Non-Fungible Token
- CBDC – Central Bank Digital Currency
- DEX – Decentralized Exchange
- DAO – Decentralized Autonomous Organization
- DeFi – Decentralized Finance
- HODL – Hold On for Dear Life (yes, it’s real)
- KYT – Know Your Transaction
- AML5 – 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive
- PoS – Proof of Stake
- PoW – Proof of Work
Usio Bonus Round: Acronyms That Still Matter
- DPA – Data Processing Agreement
- PPaaS – Payments Platform as a Service
- BPM – Business Process Management
- RFP – Request for Proposal
- SLA – Service Level Agreement
- TCO – Total Cost of Ownership
- CTO – Chief Technology Officer
- CFO – Chief Financial Officer
- CEO – Chief Executive Officer (or Chief Email Overloader)
- BAU – Business As Usual
- DR – Disaster Recovery
- MTLS – Mutual Transport Layer Security
- UAT – User Acceptance Testing
- FAANG – Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google
- OCR – Optical Character Recognition
- CSV – Comma-Separated Values
- SSO – Single Sign-On
- MFA – Multi-Factor Authentication
- OTP – One-Time Password
- DFS – Department of Financial Services
That’s a Wrap!
You made it through 126 acronyms! You’re now officially bilingual: English and FinTech.
Whether you’re a CFO decoding a board deck, a startup founder building embedded payments, or just trying to survive your first PayFac meeting—Usio is here to simplify your payments (and your acronyms).
Want to see what happens when payments actually make sense?
Check us out at Usio.com – where payments are spelled: S-I-M-P-L-E.
