Glossary

Terms, defined plainly

Short definitions for the vocabulary that comes up across digital assets and payments.

Payments where the value transferred is a token pegged to a reference currency, settled onchain rather than through correspondent banking.

A transfer where payer and payee sit in different jurisdictions, historically routed through intermediary banks with their own cut-off times.

The practice of controlling an organisation’s balances: where they sit, who may move them and how idle funds are put to work.

Wallet functionality presented inside a host application, where the user is generally unaware a wallet exists.

A model where wallet creation, key management and signing are consumed as an API rather than operated in house.

Assets whose ownership is recorded on a distributed ledger, including cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and tokenized instruments.

Payments initiated by autonomous software acting under a mandate, rather than by a person pressing a button.

Commercial activity where discovery, negotiation or settlement is carried out by software agents on a principal’s behalf.

The point at which a transfer becomes final and the obligation between parties is discharged.

A token whose peg is maintained by reserves held in the reference currency and its equivalents.

Controls applied to onchain activity: sanctions screening, travel rule messaging, and the reporting that follows.

Applications whose core logic runs as smart contracts on a public network rather than on servers a single party controls.

A European regulatory framework setting authorisation and conduct requirements for crypto-asset service providers.

A pattern for machine-to-machine payment using an HTTP payment-required response to settle per request.

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