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Definitions
- Merchant Services: The company responsible for your league's credit card processing. Your league has an operating agreement with your merchant services provider that governs the processing and per-transaction rates charged to the league.
- Payment Gateway: The 'back end' of any merchant services account is a payment gateway that is responsible for "settling" transactions every day. The gateway is the connection between the merchant services account and the issuing bank for a particular credit card. There are only a handful of payment gateways that most every merchant services provider uses, e.g. Authorize.net or Firstdata. Up until the Fall of 2019, all merchant accounts used Firstdata as their payment gateway; these accounts are in transition to Authorize.net. See inLeague moves to Authorize.net below.
- Unsettled Transaction: When a credit card transaction is submitted, it joins a "batch" of the day's transactions at your payment gateway. At the end of every day (and sometimes sooner), the payment gateway will "settle" the transaction with the issuing bank for each card in the batch. A transaction that is unsettled may be voided - this cancels the processing of the transaction and means that the league will not be charged for processing it. This is different than a refund or a return, which can only be processed on settled transactions and which may incur normal fees. When issuing refunds within inLeague, you will have the option to void a transaction if it was submitted on today's date; typically, when the option is available, it is best to use it (and sometimes required).
- Settled Transaction: After the payment gateway has cleared the day's transactions with the issuing banks for each card, the transaction is settled. At this point, it can no longer be voided; refunds are issued via the normal return or credit mechanism for your merchant service provider.
- Invoices, introduced in the Fall of 2019, represent one or more amounts owed to a league by one or more families, and they may be paid all at once or over time through recurring billing.
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