Glossary
Accounts
A Moov account is an identity record for a business or person, not a bank account. Every merchant, customer, and end-user of your platform has one, and it holds linked sources such as a Moov wallet, bank accounts, and cards. You may see these more specific terms:
Partner account
Your company's Moov account, created when you sign up. It holds your API keys and your agreement with Moov, and you create accounts and transfers through it, including transfers between other accounts. It can also collect payments for itself.
Merchant account
A business account on your platform that collects payments or sends payouts, such as a gym taking card payments for classes. In the API it's an account with accountType business; "merchant" describes its role. Collected funds land in its wallet.
Owner account
An owner account is the account that initiated an object such as a payment link (the partner or a merchant), and only the owner can update it; compare ownerAccountID with partnerAccountID or merchantAccountID to check.
Connected account
Any business or individual account connected to yours. You're connected to every account you create, and you act on it within the scopes it shares with you.
Business representatives
A business representative is someone with beneficial ownership (≥25% ownership) or significant control over a business entity. Moov must verify business representatives before enabling payment capabilities for a business account. There are two types: control officers and beneficial owners.
Capabilities
Capabilities determine what each Moov account can do, such as storing funds in a wallet, sending funds, or collecting funds. Each capability has its own identity verification requirements.
Dashboard
The Moov Dashboard is an online portal that gives partners and merchants the ability to create and manage Moov accounts and settings. Only merchant accounts created through hosted onboarding have access to their own Dashboard.
Fee
Platform partners choose pricing models for their merchants, which determine how fees are structured and presented. Fees are assessed when specific billable events occur, such as transaction volume.
A merchant can implement surcharge, convenience, or service fees on a transaction. For these fee types, the partner and merchant are wholly responsible for ensuring compliance with network rules and all federal and state consumer protection laws and regulations and any fines associated with non-compliance.
Foreign ID
A foreignID is an optional, unique alias you set on an account to link it to a record in your own system.
Idempotency
Idempotency means repeating a request produces the same result, so a retried transfer or refund can't charge someone twice. Moov uses the x-idempotency-key header for this.
Instant payments
Instant payments (RTP or FedNow) move funds to an eligible bank account in seconds, any day of the year. Moov routes instant bank payouts over the RTP or FedNow networks.
Payment methods
A payment method is the API object that pairs a source with a payment rail, such as ach-debit-fund for a bank account or moov-wallet for a wallet. You use payment methods, not sources, when you create a transfer; which ones an account has depends on its sources and capabilities.
Pull from card
Pull from card pulls funds instantly from a cardholder's Visa or Mastercard debit or prepaid card into a Moov wallet.
Push to card
Push to card sends funds instantly to an eligible debit card over Visa Direct or Mastercard Send.
Scopes
Scopes limit an OAuth 2.0 access token to a specific set of Moov endpoints and, usually, a single account. Client-side integrations such as Moov.js need them.
Sources
A source is a bank account, card, or wallet linked to a Moov account. Sources are where money is held or drawn from. Moov creates payment methods from each source, depending on the rails it supports.
Test mode
Test mode is a separate Moov environment with sample data and its own API keys where you can build and simulate transfers without moving real money. When you're ready to move real money, you switch to production mode.
Transfers
Transfers move money between payment methods. Every transfer has a source payment method (where money comes from), a destination payment method (where it goes), and an amount.
Wallets
A Moov wallet is a ledger balance that stores funds for a Moov account on Moov's platform. Funding payouts from a wallet makes them faster, and you can move money between wallets and linked bank accounts.
Visit the Moov dictionary for a comprehensive overview of industry terms.