Payment introduction

Used terms

• Payment provider
  The company or service performing the actual payment.
  Sits between Giffits and customer.
• Customer
  Our customer; The company placing an order at Giffits.
  The payment provider "Concardis" needs a customer data set for its payment process. It must contain a referencing name (not necessarily the real customer name) and a unique email address.
• Payment instrument
  The distinct payment method and data as provided by the customer.
  Payment instrument data is completely encapsuled by the payment provider. User-entered data (e.g. credit card info) is stored securely and out of public reach. Giffits has no access to those data sets either.
  The payment provider provides a hashed unique ID pointing to a specific *payment instrument. It is
  • Impossible to calculate user data from this ID;
  • Highly unlikely to access other customer's data by mangling the ID.
• Payment / card holder
  Especially in B2B environments the card holder is not the company itself but instead a real person. To create a payment, the payment provider calls out for information about this person. In case of credit card payment this is just the real name; Other payment methods may need different information.
• Payment / card issuer
  The institution responsible for the payment, usually a bank house.
• Holder account
  The bank account finally being charged.

Credit v.s Debit based payment

In debit payment the holder account is charged immediately. An example (for EU countries) is the commonly used Girocard, but it's not commonly used in B2B.

Credit payment charges a credit account first. The real holder's account is charged later by terms of the used credit system.

For a seller the difference lies in the risk of payment shortfall and the time it gets apparent. Such risks are covered by contracts between seller, payment provider, payment issuer and holder bank house. Those are legal subjects and not covered by this documentation.

For a B2B customer the difference lies in privacy and ease of use: Using a credit card the only personal data is the holder's full name. Payment just needs a minimum of four data points which hove to be entered manually. All are short and easily human-handable (in comparison to e.g. an IBAN code).

Giffits at the moment only utilises Credit Card Payment, though other methods may be implemented later.