Industry WIKI

AirPlus International GmbH is a global corporate payment provider offering payment and data services for corporate travel management, procurement, and travel trade. Originally a subsidiary of Lufthansa Group, the company was acquired by SEB Kort in July 2024. The company provides business-to-business payment services around business travel payment, accounting, and analysis functions, in

The European Commission's Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (previously the Return Fund, the Refugee Fund, and the Integration Fund) is a funding programme managed by the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs which promotes the efficient management of migration flows and the implementation, strengthening and development of a common approach to asylum and immigration in

A bank tax, or a bank levy, is a tax on banks which was discussed in the context of the 2008 financial crisis. The bank tax is levied on the capital at risk of financial institutions, excluding federally insured deposits, with the aim of discouraging banks from taking unnecessary risks. The bank tax is levied on a limited number of sophisticated taxpayers and is not especially difficult

Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown person published a white paper under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. Use of bitcoin as a currency began in 2009, with the release of its open-source implementation. From 2021 to 2025, El Salvador adopted it as legal tender curren

The Bretton Woods Conference, formally known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, was the gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 allied nations at the Mount Washington Hotel, in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, to regulate what would be the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II.

Budapest Stock Exchange (BSE) (Hungarian: Budapesti Értéktőzsde, pronounced [ˈbudɒpɛʃti ˈeːrteːktøːʒdɛ] (BÉT)) is the third largest stock exchange in Central and Eastern Europe by market capitalization and liquidity. It is located at 55 Krisztina Boulevard, Budapest, Hungary, in the Buda Centre of the Hungarian National Bank Previously, from 1864, during the Austro-Hungarian Empire it wa

A capital market is a financial market in which long-term debt (over a year) or equity-backed securities are bought and sold, in contrast to a money market where short-term debt is bought and sold. Capital markets channel the wealth of savers to those who can put it to long-term productive use, such as companies or governments making long-term investments. Financial regulators like the B

The Capital Markets Union (CMU) is an economic policy initiative launched by the former president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker in the initial exposition of his policy agenda on 15 July 2014. The main target was to create a single market for capital in the whole territory of the EU by the end of 2019. The reasoning behind the idea was to address the issue that corporate

A central securities depository (CSD) is a specialized financial market infrastructure organization holding securities such as shares or bonds, either in certificated or uncertificated (dematerialized) form, allowing ownership to be easily transferred through a book entry rather than by a transfer of physical certificates. This allows brokers and financial companies to hold their securit

A charge card is a type of credit card that enables the cardholder to make purchases which are paid for by the card issuer, to whom the cardholder becomes indebted. The cardholder is obliged to repay the debt to the card issuer in full by the due date, usually on a monthly basis, or be subject to late fees and restrictions on further card use. Charge cards are distinct from traditional c

Chartalism is a heterodox theory in macroeconomics that views money as a pure creation of the state, introduced to control and organize economic activity rather than arising from barter or debt.

A coin wrapper, also known as a bank roll or simply a roll, is a paper or plastic container designed to hold a specific number of coins. During 19th century, newly minted coins were collected in cloth bags. Initially, coin wrapping was a manual process. Since the onset of the 20th century, coin wrapping machines have been in use. The earliest patent for a coin wrapping machine was in 190

The coincidence of wants (often known as double coincidence of wants) is an economic phenomenon where two parties each hold an item that the other wants, so they exchange these items directly. Within economics, this has often been presented as the foundation of a bartering economy.

The Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) was an independent committee of European Securities regulators, in place from 2001 to 2010. On 1 January 2011, it was replaced by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

Credit theories of money, also called debt theories of money, are monetary economic theories concerning the relationship between credit and money. Proponents of these theories, such as Alfred Mitchell-Innes, sometimes emphasize that money and credit/debt are the same thing, seen from different points of view. Proponents assert that the essential nature of money is credit (debt), at leas

Cryptocurrency is a type of digital asset that uses distributed ledger, or blockchain, technology to enable a secure transaction.

A currency is a standardized form of money used as a medium of exchange. Under this definition, the US dollar, the euro, the yen, sterling, and the renminbi are examples of (government-issued) fiat currencies. Currencies may act as stores of value and be traded between nations in foreign exchange markets, which determine the relative values of the different currencies.

Della Moneta (On Money) is a 1751 book written by Ferdinando Galiani, and is one of the first specific European treatises on economics, especially monetary theory, preceding Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations by twenty-five years.

EasyGo is a joint venture between Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Austria, that enables use of a single electronic toll tag on toll roads, ferries and bridges in all the member countries. The purpose of EasyGo is to enable the use of one OBE for payment when driving through any toll facility one might encounter on the way through Northern Europe and Austria.

Bitcoin was designed by its pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, to work as a currency, but its status as a currency is disputed. Economists define money as a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account, and agree that bitcoin does not currently meet all these criteria.

Endogenous money is an economy’s supply of money that is determined endogenously—that is, as a result of the interactions of other economic variables, rather than exogenously (autonomously) by an external authority such as a central bank.

The principle of equivalence in financial services at the European Union (EU) level is one of the instruments the Commission has at its disposal to carry out its international strategy for financial services. The principle of equivalence is materialised through an equivalence decision issued by the European Commission to a targeted country that it judges fit to have access to the Europea

The Euro Short-Term Rate (€STR) is a reference rate for the euro. This interest rate can be used as the rate referenced in financial contracts that involve the euro. €STR is administered and calculated by the European Central Bank (ECB), based on the money market statistical reporting of the Eurosystem. According to the indications of the working group on euro risk-free rates, €STR repla

The European Network for Payments (abbreviated as ENP) is a joint venture aiming at developing a unified European payment solution and facilitating the interoperability of mobile payment solutions provided by several firms. The European Payments Alliance was created in December 2023 by Italian interbank network Bancomat, Spanish mobile payment firm Bizum and Portuguese firm SIBS (which

The European Payments Initiative (EPI), previously known as the Pan-European Payments System Initiative (PEPSI), is a unified digital payment service launched in 2020 and backed by sixteen founding European banks and payment service providers. Its aim is to allow European consumers and merchants to make next-generation payments for all types of person-to-person transfers and retail trans

The federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions (banks and credit unions) lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight on an uncollateralized basis. Reserve balances are amounts held at the Federal Reserve. Institutions with surplus balances in their accounts lend those balances to institutions in need of larger balances. The federal funds

The Financial Action Task Force blacklist (often abbreviated to FATF blacklist, and officially known as the "Call for action") is a blacklist maintained by the Financial Action Task Force.

A financial market is a marketplace where the pricing and trade of securities, commodities, currency, derivatives, or other financial products takes place. The term may refer to a specific stock or commodity exchange, or to the general process by which relevant economic activity is organized and carried out.

The Financial Modeling World Cup (FMWC) is an organization that hosts various Microsoft Excel–based competitions.

Financial repression refers to government implementation of policies to channel domestic funds to the public sector that in a deregulated market environment would go elsewhere. These policies are used to reduce the government's debt-to-GDP ratio.

Foreign exchange reserves (also called forex reserves or FX reserves) are cash and other reserve assets such as gold and silver held by a central bank or other monetary authority that are primarily available to balance payments of the country, influence the foreign exchange rate of its currency, and to maintain confidence in financial markets. Reserves are held in one or more reserve cur

Fractional-reserve banking is the system of banking under which banks that take deposits from the public keep only part of their deposit liabilities in liquid assets as a reserve, and lend a percentage to borrowers, thus increasing the money supply by the loaned amount. Bank reserves are held as cash in the bank or as balances in the bank's account at the central bank. Fractional-reserv

Free banking is a monetary arrangement where banks are free to issue their own paper currency (banknotes) while also being subject to no special regulations beyond those applicable to most enterprises.

Full-reserve banking (also known as 100% reserve banking) is a system of banking where banks do not lend demand deposits and instead only lend from time deposits. It differs from fractional-reserve banking, in which banks may lend funds on deposit, while fully reserved banks would be required to keep the full amount of each customer's demand deposits in cash, available for immediate with

A giro transfer, often shortened to giro (), is a payment transfer between current bank accounts 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 (e.g., the Automated Clearing House), it is not possible to perform third-party transfers with them. In the Europea

The global financial system is the worldwide framework of legal agreements, institutions, and both formal and informal economic action that together facilitate international flows of financial capital for purposes of investment and trade financing. Since emerging in the late 19th century during the first modern wave of economic globalization, its evolution is marked by the establishment

The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes was founded in 2000 and restructured in September 2009. It consists of OECD member countries as well as other jurisdictions that have agreed to implement tax related transparency and information exchange. The forum works under the auspices of the OECD and G20. Its mission is to "implement the international stan

A global saving glut (also GSG, cash hoarding, dead cash, dead money, glut of excess intended saving, or shortfall of investment intentions) is a situation in which desired saving exceeds desired investment. By 2005 Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, expressed concern about the "significant increase in the global supply of saving" and

The gold bloc were seven countries led by France that stuck to the gold standard monetary policy during the Great Depression, even though many other countries abandoned it. In addition to France, the gold bloc included Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, and Switzerland.

Gold repatriation is the process by which governments and central banks relocate sovereign gold reserves from foreign vaults back to domestic storage. Historically driven by bilateral trade reallocations or immediate security concerns, modern gold repatriation has evolved into an accelerating global trend. According to annual surveys by the World Gold Council, the proportion of central b

The history of banking began with the first prototype banks, that is, the merchants of the world, who gave grain loans to farmers and traders who carried goods between cities. This was around 2000 BCE in Assyria, India, and Sumer. Later, in ancient Greece and during the Roman Empire, lenders based in temples gave loans, while accepting deposits and performing the change of money. Archaeo

In finance and economics, interest is payment from a debtor or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is distinct from a fee which the borrower may pay to the lender or some third party. It is also distinct from dividend which is paid by a company to its share

An investor is a person or entity that allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital the investor usually purchases some species of property. Types of investments include equity, debt, securities, real estate, infrastructure, currency, commodity, token, derivatives such as put and call optio

The just price is a theory of ethics in economics that attempts to set standards of fairness in transactions. With intellectual roots in ancient Greek philosophy, it was advanced by St. Thomas Aquinas based on an argument against usury, which in his time referred to the making of any rate of interest on loans. It gave rise to the contractual principle of laesio enormis.

In macroeconomic theory, liquidity preference is the demand for money, considered as liquidity. The concept was first developed by John Maynard Keynes in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) to explain the determination of the interest rate by the supply and demand for money.

This is a list of countries and territories by their exchange rate regime.

Foreign exchange reserves, also called Forex reserves, in a strict sense, are foreign-currency deposits held by nationals and monetary authorities. However, in popular usage and in the list below, it also includes gold reserves, special drawing rights (SDRs), and IMF reserve positions because this total figure (more accurately called "official reserves", "international reserves", or "off

The Lucas islands model is an economic model of the link between money supply and price and output changes in a simplified economy using rational expectations. It delivered a new classical explanation of the Phillips curve relationship between unemployment and inflation. The model was formulated by Robert Lucas, Jr. in a series of papers in the 1970s.

M-PESA (M for mobile, PESA is Swahili for money) is a mobile phone-based money transfer service, payments and micro-financing service, launched in 2007 by Vodafone and Safaricom, the largest mobile network operator in Kenya. It has since expanded to Tanzania, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Ghana, Egypt, and Ethiopia. The rollouts in India, Romania, and Alban

In economics, a market is any structure that allows buyers and sellers to exchange goods, services and information. The exchange of goods or services, either with money or without it, is a transaction. In free market economies, they are the process by which prices and allocations of goods and services are established. Markets facilitate trade and enable the distribution and allocation of

The Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge (MECC) is a Microsoft Excel esports competition.

The Ministry of Finance (German: Bundesministerium für Finanzen) is the government ministry of Austria responsible for the collection of taxes and customs as well as the administration of fiscal and economic policy. It oversees the Revenue Service, the Revenue Service for Large Businesses, the Financial Police, and various other agencies.

The Ministry of Finance (財務省, Zaimu-shō) is one of the cabinet-level ministries of the Japanese government. The ministry was named the Ōkura-shō (大蔵省) until 2001. The Ministry is headed by the Minister of Finance (財務大臣, Zaimu-daijin), who is a member of the Cabinet and is typically chosen from members of the Diet by the Prime Minister.

Monetarism is a school of thought in monetary economics that emphasizes the role of policy-makers in controlling the amount of money in circulation. It gained prominence in the 1970s, but was mostly abandoned as a direct guidance to monetary policy during the following decade because of the rise of inflation targeting through movements of the official interest rate.

Monetary circuit theory is a heterodox theory of monetary economics, particularly money creation, often associated with the post-Keynesian school.

Monetary economics is the branch of economics that studies the nature, role, and impact of money and monetary institutions. It provides a framework for analyzing money and its core functions—as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account—and examines how money can achieve widespread acceptance, including through its role as a public good.

Monetary reform refers to proposals to change a country's monetary system, including how money is created, regulated, and distributed. Such reforms seek to address perceived problems with current monetary schemes, like financial instability, wealth inequality, or inflation. Monetary reform movements grow during economic crises, proposing alternatives to prevailing systems.

Monetary disequilibrium theory is a product of the monetarist school and is mainly represented in the works of Leland Yeager and Austrian macroeconomics. The basic concepts of monetary equilibrium and disequilibrium were, however, defined in terms of an individual's demand for cash balance by Mises (1912) in his Theory of Money and Credit.

Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are: medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment.

Money creation, or money issuance, is the process by which the money supply of a country or economic region is increased. In most modern economies, both central banks and commercial banks create money. Central banks issue money as a liability, typically called reserve deposits, which is available only for use by central bank account holders. These account holders are generally large comm

In association football, multi-club ownership (MCO) is a business model in which a single individual or entity holds influence in two or more football clubs, or a club over one or more other clubs. There are multiple different criterion for what makes a club a member of an MCO, but most cover decisive control or influence over a clubs' shares, governance, and/or finances. Two of the larg

Neutrality of money is the idea that a change in the money supply affects only nominal variables in the economy such as prices, wages, and exchange rates, with no effect on real variables, like employment, real GDP, and real consumption. Neutrality of money is an important idea in classical economics and is related to the classical dichotomy. It implies that the central bank does not aff

Paper wealth means financial assets or possessions as measured by their monetary value, as reflected in the price of assets – how much money one's assets could be sold for. Paper wealth is contrasted with real wealth, which refers to one's actual physical assets. For example, if one owns a house and its assessed value increases (relative to the general price level, i.e., assuming no infl

PaysafeCard (until 2024 stylized paysafecard) is a prepaid e-commerce payment solution powered by vouchers. It is part of Paysafe, a global payments platform. PaysafeCard allows customers to pay online without providing personal financial information.

Petrodollar recycling is the international spending or investment of a country's revenues in U.S. dollars from petroleum exports ("petrodollars"). It generally refers to the phenomenon of major petroleum-exporting states, mainly the OPEC members plus Russia and Norway, earning more money from the export of crude oil than they could efficiently invest in their own economies. The resulting

The Pfandbrief (plural: Pfandbriefe), a mostly triple-A rated German bank debenture, has become the blueprint of many covered bond models in Europe and beyond. The Pfandbrief is collateralized by long-term assets such as property mortgages or public sector loans as stipulated in the Pfandbrief Act. Total volume outstanding in Pfandbriefe was EUR 806 billion as at end-2008. Pfandbrief bon

The Polak model is a monetary approach to the balance of payment published by J. J. Polak in 1957. It seeks to model a small, open economy operating under fixed nominal exchange rate. Polak suggest explicit links between the monetary and external sectors. Polak results continue to form the theoretical bases on which the IMF Financial Programming are carried out.

In economics, a price system is a system through which the valuations of any forms of property (tangible or intangible) are determined. All societies use price systems in the allocation and exchange of resources as a consequence of scarcity. Even in a barter system with no money, price systems are still utilized in the determination of exchange ratios (relative valuations) between the pr

The prime rate or prime lending rate is an interest rate used by banks, typically representing the rate at which they lend to their most creditworthy customers. Some variable interest rates may be expressed as a percentage above or below prime rate.

The private finance initiative (PFI) was a United Kingdom government procurement policy aimed at creating "public–private partnerships" (PPPs) where private firms are contracted to complete and manage public projects. Initially launched in 1992 by Prime Minister John Major, and expanded considerably by the Blair government, PFI is part of the wider programme of privatisation and macroeco

In economics, the profit motive is the motivation of firms that operate so as to maximize their profits. Mainstream microeconomic theory posits that the ultimate goal of a business is "to make money" - not in the sense of increasing the firm's stock of means of payment (which is usually kept to a necessary minimum because means of payment incur costs, i.e. interest or foregone yields), b

A public–private partnership (PPP, 3P, or P3) is a long-term arrangement between a government and private sector institutions. Typically, it involves private capital financing government projects and services up-front, and then drawing revenues from taxpayers and/or users for profit over the course of the PPP contract. Public–private partnerships have been implemented in multiple countri

The quantity theory of money (QTM) is a hypothesis within monetary economics which states that the general price level of goods and services is directly proportional to the amount of money in circulation (i.e., the money supply), and that the causality runs from money to prices. This implies that the theory potentially explains inflation. It originated in the 16th century and has been pr

San Isidro (Spanish: [ˌsan iˈsidɾo]; lit. 'Saint Isidore') is a district of Lima, Peru. Created in 1931, it is an upscale part of the city's west central area, with about 600 meters of coastline. In recent years, it has become a major financial quarter, as many banks and businesses left downtown Lima to set up their headquarters in modern office blocks. It is inhabited by mostly upper mi

The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is a payment-integration system of the European Union that makes cross-border bank transfers in euros as fast, cheap, and simple as domestic payments. It allows individuals and businesses to make cashless euro transfers to any account within the zone using a single bank account and an International Bank Account Number, under the same basic conditions

The snake in the tunnel was a system of European monetary cooperation in the 1970s which aimed at limiting fluctuations between different European currencies. It was the first attempt at European monetary cooperation. It attempted to create a single currency band for the European Economic Community (EEC), essentially pegging all the EEC currencies to one another.

Social credit is a distributive philosophy of political economy developed in the 1920s and 1930s by the British engineer and economist C. H. Douglas. Douglas attributed economic downturns to discrepancies between the cost of goods and the compensation of the workers who made them. To combat what he saw as a chronic deficiency of purchasing power in the economy, Douglas prescribed governm

A sovereign wealth fund (SWF), or sovereign investment fund, is a state-owned investment fund that invests in real and financial assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals, or in alternative investments such as private equity funds or hedge funds. Sovereign wealth funds invest globally. Most SWFs are funded by revenues from commodity exports or from foreign exchange reser

Special drawing rights (SDRs, code XDR) are a supplementary foreign exchange reserve asset defined and maintained by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). SDRs are the units of account for the IMF, and not a currency; rather, SDR value is based on a basket of currencies, the specific composition of which is reviewed every five years. SDRs represent a claim to currency held by IMF member

The Steyler Bank is a German ethical-ecological bank using Christian finance principles that following the Steyler Missionare. It was founded in 1964 in Sankt Augustin, where it still has its headquarters, and creates funds from an ethical point of view. The Steyler Bank also has a branch in Austria.

TARGET2-Securities, in shorthand T2S, is the Eurosystem's platform for securities settlement in central bank money. T2S offers centralised delivery-versus-payment (DvP) settlement across several European securities markets, without being itself a central securities depository (CSD) since it does not offer CSD services such as custody or asset servicing.

UNIDROIT (formally, the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law; French: Institut international pour l'unification du droit privé) is an intergovernmental organization whose objective is to harmonize private international law across countries through uniform rules, international conventions, and the production of model laws, sets of principles, guides and guidelines. E

The wage unit is a unit of measurement for monetary quantities introduced by Keynes in his 1936 book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (General Theory). A value expressed in wage units is equal to its price in money units divided by the wage (in money units) of a man-hour of labour.

Wero is a European digital wallet and instant account-to-account payment service developed by the European Payments Initiative (EPI). It was launched in Germany on 2 July 2024, followed by France and Belgium later that year. Wero is currently available in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Leading Austrian banks are planning to introduce the service.

A world currency, supranational currency, or global currency is a currency that is widely used in international finance or in international trade to price goods or other transactions. It is generally a currency which is stable in terms of inflation and has a high demand on the foreign exchange market. Greek and Roman coins were the first world currency, followed by Dutch guilders in the