Electronic Funds Transfer at Point Of Sale, abbreviated as EFTPOS; is the technical term referring to a type of payment transaction where electronic funds transfers (EFT) are processed at a point of sale (POS) system or payment terminal usually via payment methods such as payment cards. EFTPOS technology was developed during the 1980s.
The International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is an internationally agreed upon system of identifying bank accounts across national borders to facilitate the communication and processing of cross border transactions with a reduced risk of transcription errors. An IBAN uniquely identifies the account of a customer at a financial institution. It was originally adopted by the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS) and since 1997 as the international standard ISO 13616 under the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The current version is ISO 13616:2020, which indicates the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) as the formal registrar. Initially developed to facilitate payments within the European Union, it has been implemented by most European countries and numerous countries in other parts of the world, mainly in the Middle East and the Caribbean. By July 2024, 88 countries were using the IBAN numbering system.
ISO 9362 is an international standard for Business Identifier Codes (BIC), a unique identifier for business institutions, approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). BIC is also known as SWIFT-BIC, SWIFT ID, or SWIFT code, after the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which is designated by ISO as the BIC registration authority. BIC was defined originally as Bank Identifier Code and is most often assigned to financial organizations; when it is assigned to non-financial organization, the code may also be known as Business Entity Identifier (BEI). These codes are used when transferring money between banks, particularly for international wire transfers, and also for the exchange of other messages between banks. The codes can sometimes be found on account statements.
Magnetic ink character recognition code, known in short as MICR code, is a character recognition technology used mainly by the banking industry to streamline the processing and clearance of cheques and other documents. MICR encoding, called the MICR line, is at the bottom of cheques and other vouchers and typically includes the document-type indicator, bank code, bank account number, cheque number, cheque amount, and a control indicator. The format for the bank code and bank account number is country-specific.
A transaction account, also called a checking account, chequing account, current account, demand deposit account, or share account at credit unions, is a deposit account or bank account held at a bank or other financial institution. It is available to the account owner "on demand" and is available for frequent and immediate access by the account owner or to others as the account owner may direct. Access may be in a variety of ways, such as cash withdrawals, use of debit cards, cheques and electronic transfer. In economic terms, the funds held in a transaction account are regarded as liquid funds. In accounting terms, they are considered as cash.
Cheque clearing or bank clearance is the process of moving cash from the bank on which a cheque is drawn to the bank in which it was deposited, usually accompanied by the movement of the cheque to the paying bank, either in the traditional physical paper form or digitally under a cheque truncation system. This process is called the clearing cycle and normally results in a credit to the account at the bank of deposit, and an equivalent debit to the account at the bank on which it was drawn, with a corresponding adjustment of accounts of the banks themselves. If there are not enough funds in the account when the cheque arrived at the issuing bank, the cheque would be returned as a dishonoured cheque marked as non-sufficient funds.
In the United States, an ABA routing transit number is a nine-digit code printed on the bottom of checks to identify the financial institution on which it was drawn. The American Bankers Association (ABA) developed the system in 1910 to facilitate the sorting, bundling, and delivering of paper checks to the drawer's bank for debit to the drawer's account.
Wire transfer, bank transfer, or credit transfer, is a method of electronic funds transfer from one person or entity to another. A wire transfer can be made from one bank account to another bank account, or through a transfer of cash at a cash office.
A giro transfer, often shortened to giro, is a payment transfer from one current bank account to another bank account and initiated by the payer, not the payee. The debit card has a similar model. Giros are primarily used in Europe; although electronic payment systems exist in the United States, it is not possible to perform third-party transfers with them. In the European Union, the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) allows electronic giro or debit card payments in euros to be executed to any euro bank account in the area.
The Australian financial system consists of the arrangements covering the borrowing and lending of funds and the transfer of ownership of financial claims in Australia, comprising:
A cheque is a document that orders a bank, building society to pay a specific amount of money from a person's account to the person in whose name the cheque has been issued. The person writing the cheque, known as the drawer, has a transaction banking account where the money is held. The drawer writes various details including the monetary amount, date, and a payee on the cheque, and signs it, ordering their bank, known as the drawee, to pay the amount of money stated to the payee.
In banking and finance, clearing refers to all activities from the time a commitment is made for a transaction until it is settled. This process turns the promise of payment into the actual movement of money from one account to another. Clearing houses were formed to facilitate such transactions among banks.
A bank code is a code assigned by a central bank, a bank supervisory body or a Bankers Association in a country to all its licensed member banks or financial institutions. The rules vary to a great extent between the countries. Also the name of bank codes varies. In some countries the bank codes can be viewed over the internet, but mostly in the local language.
Sort codes are the domestic bank codes used to route money transfers between financial institutions in the United Kingdom, and in the Republic of Ireland. They are six-digit hierarchical numerical addresses that specify clearing banks, clearing systems, regions, large financial institutions, groups of financial institutions and ultimately resolve to individual branches. In the UK they continue to be used to route transactions domestically within clearance organizations and to identify accounts, while in the Republic of Ireland they have been deprecated and replaced by the Single European Payment Area (SEPA) systems and infrastructure.
Australian Payments Network Limited (AusPayNet), formerly the Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA) is the self-regulatory body set up by the payments industry to improve the safety, reliability, equity, convenience and efficiency of payment systems in Australia.
Payment and settlement systems are used for financial transactions in India. Covered by the Payment and Settlement Systems Act of 2007, legislated in December 2007, they are regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Board for Regulation and Supervision of Payment and Settlement Systems.
BPAY is an Australian electronic bill payment SaaS company which facilitates payments made through a financial institution's online, mobile or telephone banking facility to organisations which are registered BPAY billers.
Cheque truncation is a cheque clearance system that involves the digitization of a physical paper cheque into a substitute electronic form for transmission to the paying bank. The process of cheque clearance, involving data matching and verification, is done using digital images instead of paper copies.
A routing number is the term for bank codes in Canada. Routing numbers consist of eight numerical digits with a dash between the fifth and sixth digit for paper financial documents encoded with magnetic ink character recognition and nine numerical digits without dashes for electronic funds transfers. Routing numbers are regulated by Payments Canada, formerly known as the Canadian Payments Association, to allow easy identification of the branch location and financial institution associated with an account.
Instant payment is a method of electronic funds transfer, allowing for almost immediate transfer of money between bank accounts. This was in contrast to the previous transfer times of one to three business days that had been in place until the mid-2010s.
