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Glossary of Acronyms and Definitions

ACH
Automated Clearing House payment – direct/electronic payments
ACH Operator
Central clearing facilities, either the Federal Reserve Bank or The Clearing House
Addenda
Additional information about the entry such as purchase order number
B2B
Business to Business transaction
Controlled Disbursement
Used to regulate the flow of checks through the banking system on a daily basis, usually by mandating once‐daily distributions of checks (usually early in the day). This is done in order to meet certain investment or funds management objectives.
CSV
Comma‐separated values (CSV) file stores tabular data (numbers and text) in plain text. Each line of the file is a data record. Each record consists of one or more fields, separated by commas. The use of the comma as a field separator is the source of the name for this file format.
EDI
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) ‐ electronic transfer of business information in a standardized, machine‐readable format; facilitates electronic transmission of payment and remittance data to receivers.
E‐Payments Routing Directory
Listing of eligible routing transit numbers for wires and securities participants and for ACH participant RDFIs with commercial receipt volume. Typically used with standard spreadsheet or database management software.
HTML
Human‐readable format. The acronym HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, the primary markup language used to write content on the Web.
IAT
International ACH Transaction
NACHA
National Automated Clearinghouse Association. NACHA is the rule making body for ACH.
NOC
Notification of Change – a type of ACH entry that provides correction data to the originator of the payment.
ODFI
Originating Depository Financial Institution (ODFI). Originates outgoing ACH payments, debits and credits, into the ACH network on behalf of its originators.
PDF
Human‐readable format; stands for Portable Document Format.
P2P
Person to person payment
RDFI
Receiving Depository Financial Institution (RDFI). Receives incoming ACH payments, debits and credits, from the ACH network on behalf of its receivers.
Same Day ACH
NACHA ACH Rules Change to provide a new, ubiquitous capability for moving ACH payments faster. The rule enables the same-day processing and settlement of domestic ACH debits and credits of less than $25k. ACH Originators that desire same-day processing may send same-day ACH transactions to accounts at any RDFI. The rule allows for "Same Day Entry Fees" on each Same Day ACH transaction.
SEC code
A Standard Entry Class Code (SEC Code) identifies a specific payment application. The code incorporates type of payment (debit or credit), account nature (consumer or corporate), and record format used to carry format. Implicit in the code is how authorization is arranged (standing, oral, type of transaction, etc).
STP
Straight‐through processing (STP) typically associated with automated accounts receivable systems.
TXT
The TXT file format, ending in “.txt,” is a file format that is in plain text. The character set contained in the text file is the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange).

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