Fundraising tech/Glossary

Auditing - A nightly reconciliation process for each processor, usually based on files that we receive from the processor that include a full list of all transactions made each day. This is our last failsafe for data integrity, if something is missing from the audit file, it's likely that we'll never know about it.

AVS - Address Verification System, a layer of fraud scoring based on address street number and postal code matching, only supported for some cards issued in Canada, the USA, and the UK.

Contribution tracking - How we track donations throughout the pipeline. This consists of a single database table, and a contribution tracking ID which should stay the same as the donation progresses.

CVV - Card verification value, a security code present on many cards used as an additional layer of fraud scoring.

Donatewiki - A somewhat secured wiki that serves as an optional landing page before redirecting donors to paymentswiki. This wiki doesn't have DonationInterface installed, instead it has onwiki forms that look similar, but are entirely wikitext and CSS.

Gateway adapter - Our DonationInterface code to interface with a processor. Currently, this captures the frontend logic, but not IPN and audit code. Conceptually it should encompass those bits as well.

GC - GlobalCollect, a payment service provides which we use to charge credit cards across most of the world. Also processes some e-wallets and bank transfer methods.

Listener - Also called "Instant Payment Notification" (IPN) after a brand-name implementation. Processors send these indications of payment activity to our IPN listener endpoints. They can indicate payment success or failure, or that a chargeback or a refund has occurred. These notifications are helpful for keeping us up-to-date, but are never reliable.

MinFraud - A MaxMind service we use for an additional layer of fraud scoring.

Orphan - A transaction where the donor has provided their credit card details to the processor, but we have not yet made API calls to confirm the charges. Maintenance scripts exist to finish processing transactions orphaned at the GlobalCollect processor.

Paymentswiki - Secure cluster where DonationInterface presents payments forms and makes charges.

Processor - Short for "payment service provider" (PSP), the third party doing financial transactions on our behalf.

WP - Worldpay, another payment service provider which we use to charge credit cards.