APM (Alternative Payment Method)
An Alternative Payment Method is any way to pay that is not a traditional card: bank transfers, e-wallets, open banking, vouchers, and local schemes. In many markets an APM is the dominant way customers actually pay, and some carry lower chargeback risk than cards.
Relying on cards alone can quietly cap conversion in markets where a local APM dominates, sometimes leaving a double-digit share of potential customers unable to pay their preferred way. Adding the right APMs both widens reach and can lower the blended chargeback exposure that governs your card acquiring.
Authorisation rate is the share of attempted transactions that issuing banks approve rather than decline.
An acquirer is the bank or financial institution that processes card payments on a merchant’s behalf, settling funds from the card networks into the merchant’s account.
A Payment Service Provider aggregates payment processing for merchants, typically holding the direct acquirer relationship itself and onboarding merchants under its own risk appetite, rather than each merchant applying to an acquirer directly.
Chargeback ratio is the share of transactions disputed by cardholders against total transaction count in a given month.