Peptide Payments Glossary: The Terms That Decide Your Money
Payments has a vocabulary designed for insiders, and peptide sellers meet all of it in their first bad week. Every term that decides your money, defined in plain language.
Getting approved
Payment processor
The company that moves card payments between your customer's bank and yours, and the counterparty that decides whether your category is welcome. For research peptides the mainstream answer is no, for reasons covered in why processors drop peptide companies.
Merchant account
The bank account category that lets a business accept card payments, opened with an acquiring bank after underwriting. High-risk categories get harder terms or no terms; the alternatives are compared in peptide merchant account alternatives.
Underwriting
The risk review a processor or acquirer runs on your business before and after approval: what you sell, how you market it, your dispute history, your financials. Approval is a file that stays open, not a decision made once, which is why peptide accounts can open smoothly and close months later.
MID (merchant ID)
The identifier assigned to a merchant account for routing and monitoring. When sellers talk about losing their MID or shopping for a new one, they mean losing the merchant account behind it and starting underwriting again.
Payment gateway
The software that carries checkout data from your store to the processor. Gateways get blamed for closures they merely relay: when the account behind the gateway is closed, the gateway goes quiet with it.
High-risk category
An industry classification acquirers apply to whole business types, based on regulatory ambiguity and dispute rates rather than individual conduct. Research peptides are classed there, which is why store quality does not change the outcome.
Payment aggregator
A provider that pools many small merchants under its own processing relationships instead of giving each a merchant account. Signup is instant because underwriting happens later, from live transaction data; the peptide-store experience of that model is covered in the Square policy explainer.
Risk controls and what they cost
Rolling reserve
A percentage of every sale the processor holds back for a set window before releasing it, as a buffer against future disputes. It is the single biggest working-capital cost of high-risk processing, detailed in reserves, holds, and freezes.
Payout hold
A delay or stop on transfers from your processing balance to your bank, imposed while the provider reviews activity. Holds after an account closure commonly run for months while chargebacks and reversals clear.
Account freeze / limitation
The enforcement state where a platform restricts an account and holds its balance. PayPal's version is the limitation, described in the PayPal explainer; the pattern is the same across platforms.
Chargeback
A card payment reversed through the customer's bank, months after delivery if the bank allows it. Chargebacks are both a direct cost and the statistic that gets categories classified high-risk; the mechanics and the alternative are in chargebacks vs one-way settlement.
Dispute rate
Chargebacks as a share of transactions, the number card networks watch per merchant and per category. Cross a threshold and the merchant enters monitoring programs with fines and, eventually, termination.
MATCH list
Mastercard's database of terminated merchants, checked by acquirers during underwriting. A listing follows the business and its principals for five years, explained in the MATCH list.
Selling compliantly
RUO (research use only)
The classification under which research peptides are lawfully sold: for laboratory research, not human use. RUO shapes marketing, labeling, and who will bank you, and compliance with it belongs to the seller regardless of how payments run, covered in what research use only means for taking payments.
Acceptable use policy (AUP)
The document where a platform lists what it will not carry, and the authority under which peptide accounts are closed. Reading the AUP before building on a platform is cheaper than reading it after; the major ones are decoded in the platform policies section of the library.
Restricted business list
The category list attached to a processor's terms naming what it will not process. Research peptides sit inside the pharmaceutical-adjacent entries on the mainstream lists, starting with Stripe's.
Settling without a processor
Checkout software
Software that runs the checkout while payments move directly from customer to merchant, with no processor, merchant account, or intermediary balance in the flow. This is what Peer Pay is, contrasted with processing in high-risk merchant account vs checkout software.
Proof-verified payment
A payment confirmed by a cryptographic proof that it actually happened in the customer's payment app, rather than by a screenshot or a human check. The order marks itself paid; the flow is in how proof-verified checkout works.
Payment link
A checkout carried in a URL, for orders that happen in DMs, Telegram, or email instead of a storefront. The verified flow without a store, covered in selling with payment links.
USDC
A digital dollar: a stablecoin redeemable one-to-one for US dollars, issued by a regulated company that publishes reserve attestations. It is what Peer Pay settlement lands in, explained for operators in getting paid in USDC.
Self-custodial wallet
A wallet where only you hold the keys, so no platform can freeze, hold, or reverse the balance. The property that makes settlement yours in a way a processing balance never was.
One-way settlement
Settlement that is final once verified, with no third-party reversal path. Refunds still exist, as separate transactions you initiate; the trade is examined honestly in chargebacks vs one-way settlement.