Glossary of Terms
S
A member of an operational clearing able to make and receive payment for the value of its clearings over its account at the Bank of England.
A debit card. All Solo purchases are subject to electronic authorisation.
A plastic card having a single function. The term is normally used in the context of ATM-only cards to describe cards issued by banks and building societies (e.g, cards related to savings products) to withdraw cash from ATMs but not to be used for purchases.
An instruction from customers to their bank or building society to make regular automated payments of a specified amount to a named creditor. The term is also used to refer to individual payments arising from the instruction.
A payment card limited in use to a specified retailer or group of retailers. Some cards include the facility to withdraw cash from ATMs.
See prepayment card.
A UK debit card scheme rebranded as Maestro with effect from 1 July 2004.
T
TARGET (Trans-European Automated Real-Time Gross Settlement Express Transfer System)
A system which interlinks the national real-time gross settlement systems of EU Member States through a central message switch.
A largely manual, low-volume, same-day value paper clearing for high-value cheques and other debit items which operated between branches within a designated area corresponding roughly to the City of London. The Town clearing ceased operation on 24 February 1995.
Trojans take their name from the term 'Trojan Horse' and are a type of computer virus which can be installed on your computer without you realising. Trojans are sometimes capable of installing a "keystroke logger" which captures all of the keystrokes entered into a computer keyboard. Some specifically seek to capture passwords entered at certain websites by capturing keystrokes or taking screen shots of sites you visit. This information is then sent to the fraudsters over the Internet.
Typically the fraudsters will send out e-mails at random to get people to click on a link from the e-mail and visit a malicious website where vulnerabilities in the web browser are exploited to install the Trojan. The e-mails are not normally related to Internet banking and try and dupe people into visiting clicking on the link to the malicious web site with a variety of excuses.
U
The US dollar clearing is the only remaining operational currency clearing under the auspices of the Currency Clearing Committee. It handles paper items drawn on, or payable at, UK branches of members and those with agency arrangements.
