Glossary

The terms below mean exactly what’s written here, in this product. Some of them have looser meanings in the wider industry; we use them tightly.

A

AAL2 — Authentication Assurance Level 2. A second factor (TOTP / WebAuthn) asserted at token issue. Required for some destructive admin actions. See Authentication.

Aggregate — In the event-stream sense: a top-level entity whose events are ordered. For Paylera, the aggregates are subscription, invoice, payment, customer, wallet, payout_batch, affiliate, coupon, and webhook_endpoint.

Aggregation — In the usage sense: the function (sum, max, last_during_period, unique_count) that turns a stream of events into a per-period quantity.

Audience — A token property: service, customer, or admin. Determines which APIs the token may call.

Auto-top-up — Automatic wallet top-up: when balance drops below a trigger, charge a configured method for a configured amount.

B

Billing cycle anchor — The timestamp on which a subscription’s periods recur. May be in the past or the future.

Burn rate — In SLO context: how fast you’re consuming the error budget for a window. 14.4× over 5 minutes is a hard page.

C

Catalog — The set of products, plans, and components that customers can subscribe to.

Commitment — A minimum subscription term that constrains cancellation. See Trials & commitments.

Component — A priced part of a plan. A plan has one or more components; each picks one pricing model.

Credit note — An accounting document that reduces the amount a customer owes on a finalised invoice (or refunds them). See Credit notes.

D

DEK — Data Encryption Key. The key that actually encrypts user data. Per-tenant, wrapped by a KEK.

Deferred revenue — Cash collected for service not yet delivered. A liability on the balance sheet until the service is delivered, at which point it becomes recognised revenue.

Dunning — The process of retrying failed payments before giving up. See Process dunning.

E

Envelope cipher — Encryption scheme where data is encrypted with a DEK, and the DEK itself is encrypted with a KEK held in KMS.

F

Finalisation — The transition of an invoice from draft to open. Locks the line items.

FSM — Finite State Machine. Subscription, invoice, payment, and dunning are FSMs; transitions follow declared rules.

FX — Foreign exchange. The act of converting one currency to another, or the system that holds the rates.

I

Idempotency key — A header (Idempotency-Key) that makes a POST safely repeatable. See Idempotency.

Inclusive (tax) — Pricing where the displayed amount already contains tax (subtotal_excluding_tax + tax = displayed). The opposite of exclusive.

K

KEK — Key Encryption Key. Held in KMS; never on disk. Wraps DEKs.

KMS — Key Management Service. The cloud-provider service that holds KEKs.

L

Live mode — The production environment. Real money. Live API base URL is https://api.paylera.io.

M

Meter — A named metric (api_calls, active_seats) that a usage or per_unit component prices on.

Minor unit — The smallest indivisible amount in a currency. Cents for USD; one yen for JPY.

MRR — Monthly Recurring Revenue. Computed from active subscriptions.

O

Outbox — The internal mechanism by which Paylera’s domain events become webhook deliveries. (You don’t interact with the outbox directly; you register a webhook endpoint.)

P

Payment provider — Stripe, PayPal, Adyen, Braintree, etc. Paylera calls them to capture cards.

Payment method — A tokenised payment instrument (card, bank account, wallet) attached to a customer.

Plan — A priced offering of a product, in one currency, on one interval, composed of one or more components.

Presentment currency — What the customer sees on the invoice (vs settlement currency, what your bank receives).

Problem document — RFC 7807 error envelope. Carries a stable problem discriminator your code branches on. See Errors.

Product — A catalog object describing what you sell. Grouping for plans.

Promo code — A public-facing code that maps to a coupon.

Proration — The mid-period billing adjustment when a subscription changes plan or quantity.

Q

Quantity — The count of units for a fixed-quantity component (per-unit, tiered, volume, package). Stored on the subscription.

R

Recognition — Moving deferred revenue to recognised revenue, on the schedule established at invoice payment.

Replay — Retrying an idempotent request with the same key. Returns the original response.

Retention policy — How long Paylera keeps a class of data. See Data protection.

RLS — Row-Level Security. Postgres feature that gates row access by a session GUC. Paylera uses it to enforce tenant isolation.

S

SAQ-A — The lightest PCI self-assessment questionnaire, applicable when you outsource all card data to PCI-validated third parties.

Scope — A token permission (catalog:write, payments:refund). Endpoints declare what scopes they require.

Settlement — The provider depositing funds into your bank account. Distinct from capture (the moment the customer’s card is charged).

SLO — Service Level Objective. A measurable target with an error budget. See Trust.

T

Tenant — A Paylera account. One per business / brand. Isolated data; isolated keys.

Tier (pricing) — A band in a tiered or volume pricing model with its own unit price.

U

Usage — Variable consumption priced on a usage component. You post events; Paylera aggregates at period close.

W

Wallet — A per-customer prepaid credit balance in a single currency.

Webhook endpoint — An HTTPS URL Paylera delivers events to.

Webhook event — A typed message describing a state change.