XPayIndustry WIKIBack to home
XPAY KNOWLEDGE

Industry WIKI

Digital assets and currencies

Understand assets, networks and trading mechanics with sources you can check.

Trading basics

2010 flash crash

The flash crash of May 6, 2010, , also known as the crash of 2:45 or simply the flash crash, was a United States trillion-dollar flash crash (a type of stock market crash) which started at 2:32 p.m. EDT and lasted for approximately 36 minutes.

Payments & settlement

Altyn Asyr (payment system)

Altyn Asyr (lit. 'Golden age') is a Turkmenistani domestic card scheme founded in 2001 by the Central Bank of Turkmenistan. The Altyn Asyr system is an integral part of Turkmenistan's payment infrastructure. Altyn Asyr offers financial services, including credit card, debit card, and prepaid card issuing and network processing.

Finance

Anglo Irish Bank hidden loans controversy

The Anglo Irish Bank hidden loans controversy (also known as the circular transactions controversy) began in Dublin in December 2008 when Seán FitzPatrick, the chairman of Anglo Irish Bank (the state's third-largest bank), admitted he had hidden a total of €87 million in loans from the bank, triggering a series of incidents which led to the eventual nationalisation of Anglo on 21 January

Payments & settlement

Charge card

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

Finance

Cirrus (interbank network)

Cirrus is a worldwide interbank network that provides cash to Mastercard cardholders. As a subsidiary of Mastercard, it connects all Mastercard's credit, debit, and prepaid cards, as well as ATM cards issued by various banks worldwide bearing the Mastercard/Maestro logo.

Payments & settlement

Contactless payment

Contactless payment systems are credit cards and debit cards, key fobs, smart cards, or other devices, including smartphones and other mobile devices, that use radio-frequency identification (RFID) or near-field communication (NFC) for making secure payments. The embedded integrated circuit chip and antenna enable consumers to wave their card, fob, or handheld device over a reader at the

Payments & settlement

Credit card

A credit card (or charge card) is a payment card, usually issued by a bank, allowing the card's users to purchase goods and services, or withdraw cash on credit. Card use thereby accrues debt that must be repaid later.

Payments & settlement

Electronic Payment Services

Electronic Payment Services (Chinese: 易辦事), commonly known as EPS, is an electronic payment system based in Hong Kong, Macau, and with limited acceptance in Shenzhen since it began operations in 1985. The service is provided by EPS Company (Hong Kong) Limited which currently has over 30,000 acceptance locations.

Trading basics

Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

In September 2008, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced that it would take over the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). Both government-sponsored enterprises, which finance home mortgages in the United States by issuing bonds, had become illiquid as the market for those bonds collapsed in the subp

Fiat currencies

Forex scandal

The forex scandal (also known as the forex probe) is a 2013 financial scandal that involves the revelation, and subsequent investigation, that banks colluded for at least a decade to manipulate exchange rates on the forex market for their own financial gain. Market regulators in Asia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States began to investigate the $4.7 trillion per day fo

Finance

Freedom Holding

Freedom Holding Corp. is an American investment conglomerate headquartered in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Founded in 2008 by Timur Turlov in the United States, the company provides a range of services in retail financial securities brokerage and trading, asset management, capital markets, investment research and counseling, investment banking and underwriting services, mortgages, insurance, bank

Finance

Global Finance & Technology Network

Global Finance & Technology Network (GFTN) (formerly Elevandi) is a Singapore-based nonprofit organisation created by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in 2024 to support the development of the global fintech ecosystem.

Finance

Green finance and the Belt and Road Initiative

Green finance is officially promoted as an important feature of the Belt and Road Initiative, China's signature global economic development initiative. The official vision for the BRI calls for an environmentally friendly "Green Belt and Road".

Payments & settlement

Interac

Interac is a Canadian interbank network that links financial institutions and other enterprises for the purpose of exchanging electronic financial transactions. Interac serves as the Canadian debit card system and the predominant funds transfer network via its e-Transfer service. There are over 59,000 automated teller machines that can be accessed through the Interac network in Canada, a

Finance

Internationalization of the renminbi

Since the late 2000s, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has sought to internationalize its official currency, the renminbi (RMB) or Chinese yuan (CNY). This initiative aims to reduce dependence on the United States dollar and enhance China's influence in the global financial system. Key strategies have included promoting the use of the yuan in international trade invoicing, cross-bord

Payments & settlement

Mondex

Mondex was a smart card electronic cash system, implemented as a stored-value card and owned by Mastercard.

Payments & settlement

Payment card

Payment cards are part of a payment system issued by financial institutions, such as banks, to a customer that enables its owner (the cardholder) to access the funds in the customer's designated bank accounts, or through a credit account and make payments by electronic transfer with a payment terminal and access automated teller machines (ATMs). Such cards are known by a variety of names

Payments & settlement

Payment terminal

A payment terminal, also known as a point of sale (POS) terminal, card machine, credit card machine, card reader, PIN pad, EFTPOS terminal (or by the older term as PDQ terminal which stands for "Process Data Quickly"), is a device which interfaces with payment cards to make electronic funds transfers. The terminal typically consists of a secure keypad (called a PINpad) for entering PIN,

Finance

Primary Dealer Credit Facility

On March 17, 2008, in response to the subprime mortgage crisis and the collapse of Bear Stearns, the Federal Reserve announced the creation of a new lending facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF). Eligible borrowers include all financial institutions listed as primary dealers, and the term of the loan is a repurchase agreement, or "repo" loan, whereby the broker dealer sells

Securities & exchanges

Production sharing agreement

Production sharing agreements (PSAs) or production sharing contracts (PSCs) are a common type of contract signed between a government and a resource extraction company (or group of companies) concerning how much of the resource (usually oil) extracted from the country each will receive.

Payments & settlement

QR code payment

A QR code payment is a mobile payment method where payment is performed by scanning a QR code from a mobile app. This is an alternative to doing electronic funds transfer at point of sale using a payment terminal. This avoids a lot of the infrastructure traditionally associated with electronic payments such as payment cards, payment networks, payment terminal and merchant accounts.

Finance

Quantitative easing

Quantitative easing (QE) is a monetary policy action where a central bank purchases predetermined amounts of government bonds, company shares, or other financial assets (liquidity) in order to artificially stimulate economic activity. Quantitative easing is a novel form of monetary policy that began in Japan and came into wide application in the US following the 2008 financial crisis. It

Banking

Shadow banking system

The shadow banking system is the collection of non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs), or nondepository financial institutions (NDFIs) that legally provide services similar to traditional commercial banks but outside normal banking regulations. S&P Global estimates that, at end-2022, shadow banking held about $63 trillion in financial assets in major jurisdictions around the world, re

Payments & settlement

Surcharge (payment systems)

A payment surcharge, also known as checkout fee, is an extra fee charged by a merchant when receiving a payment by cheque, credit card, charge card, debit card or an e-money account, but not cash, which at least covers the cost to the merchant of accepting that means of payment, such as the merchant service fee imposed by a credit card company. Retailers generally incur higher costs when

Payments & settlement

Vocalink

Vocalink is a payment systems company headquartered in the United Kingdom, created in 2007 from the merger between Voca and LINK. It designs, builds and operates the UK payments infrastructure, which underpins the provision of the Bacs payment system and the UK ATM LINK switching platform covering 65,000 ATMs and the UK Faster Payments systems.