The words, explained once.
Wallet vocabulary is borrowed from banking, from card schemes and lately from crypto, which means the same word often means three things. These are the definitions this site uses, and where a term describes something DigiWise does, it says so.
Where a definition is general industry usage rather than a statement about DigiWise, it is written that way deliberately.
The four movements.
Almost everything else is built out of these, so they are worth reading first.
What is a Top Up?
Loading money into a wallet. In a DigiWise wallet the money comes from a card, entered on the payment provider's own secure page, and the balance moves once the provider confirms the payment. Card details never reach us and we do not hold them.
What is a Payment, in wallet terms?
Money leaving a wallet to pay for something inside the product the wallet lives in. Your app asks for an amount and the wallet holder approves it. A payment can be divided between several parties as it is made.
What is a Transfer?
Money moving from one wallet to another wallet in the same product, with a reference, and with no card and no bank in between. Transfers are instant, and they cannot be reversed, so the wallet says so before anyone confirms one and asks for a one-time code first.
What is a Withdrawal?
Money leaving the wallet system entirely. It goes to the holder's own bank account, or comes out as cash at an ATM with a PIN sent by SMS. A person checks every withdrawal before it is released, and withdrawals are manually reviewed and typically processed within 1 to 3 business days.
What kind of thing a wallet is.
These terms describe arrangements rather than features, and they are the ones most often used loosely.
What is a closed-loop wallet?
General usage: a wallet whose balance is spendable inside a defined set of places rather than anywhere a card network reaches. In a DigiWise wallet that set is the product the wallet lives in and the businesses trading inside it. Money can still be withdrawn to a bank account or taken as cash at an ATM.
What is an open-loop wallet?
General usage: value that is spendable anywhere a payment network reaches, rather than only with the business that issued it. A card is the familiar example. DigiWise does not issue open-loop instruments.
What is an embedded wallet?
A wallet that opens from inside a business's own application rather than as a separate app. In a DigiWise wallet the holder signs in where they already sign in. Note that the same phrase is widely used for wallets holding digital assets; a DigiWise wallet holds ordinary money.
What is wallet-as-a-service?
General usage: a wallet platform a business embeds in its own product rather than building from scratch. It describes the commercial arrangement rather than a feature of the wallet.
What is a payment gateway?
General usage: the connection that takes a card payment and settles it into a bank account. Its job ends at settlement. A wallet is a different layer, and the two are often used together.
Is a digital wallet a bank account?
No. A wallet is not a bank account and it is not a card gateway. It is the layer that holds and moves money between the people in a product.
Balances, ledgers and reconciliation.
This is the vocabulary your finance team will use, and where most confusion between a balance and a total comes from.
What is a wallet ledger?
The record of every movement into and out of every wallet, written so any balance can be rebuilt from the movements behind it. In a DigiWise wallet every amount is recorded twice and checked automatically.
What is double-entry bookkeeping?
General usage: recording every movement twice, once as its source and once as its destination, so the two sides can be checked against each other. If they disagree, the difference is raised rather than absorbed.
What is the difference between actual balance and available balance?
Actual Balance is everything collected. Available Balance is the part of it that is not already committed to somebody else, and so can be used now. They are two of the four balances a business trading inside your product sees.
What are pending credits and pending payments?
Pending Credits is money on the way in, initiated but not yet confirmed by the payment provider. Pending Payments is money committed to leave, including a withdrawal waiting on review.
What is reconciliation?
General usage: checking that two records of the same money agree. With a wallet ledger the check runs on the movement rather than at month end, and every movement can be exported for any period so a finance team can reconcile against it directly.
Splits, refunds and structure.
What is a split payment?
One payment divided between more than one party. In a DigiWise wallet the division happens as the payment is made, and the parts must add up to the amount paid. A split that does not balance is not accepted.
What is a partial refund?
Returning part of a transaction while the rest stands. Full, partial and bulk refunds all go back to the wallet the money came from, rather than to a card.
What is a bulk refund?
A batch of refunds handled in one action rather than one at a time. Note that bulk refunds are documented; bulk transfers are a different thing and are not something this platform does.
What is an ecosystem wallet?
The wallet at the top of the structure, held in your name, where your own share of a transaction lands. Merchant and business wallets sit under it, one for each business trading inside your product, and personal wallets sit under those.
What is a connected application?
The business's own app or site that a wallet is opened from. Wallets are opened from inside a connected application, which is what makes the wallet embedded rather than separate.
What is a one-time code, and when is one asked for?
A short code sent to the wallet holder to confirm that it is really them. In a DigiWise wallet two-factor authentication applies on login and before a transfer, and the codes are rate-limited.
Ask about the ones that matter to you.
If a term here does not map onto how your product works, say so and we will tell you what does.