Glossary

The top-level Mollie account that represents a single legal business entity. Every profile, balance, and capability belongs to an organization. In Connect, both your platform and each connected merchant are organizations.

Partner (Platform)

The business that builds on Connect to onboard and serve merchants. The platform's own organization holds its OAuth app, its fee and route revenue and platform-level settings.

Merchant

A business that a platform onboards onto Mollie to accept payments. This is the default term for the onboarded business which Mollie verifies through KYB.

Connected account

A merchant organization that is connected to a platform through OAuth or Client Link, allowing the platform to act on its behalf (within the granted scopes).

Customer

A merchant's own buyer, managed through the Customers API (cst_) for repeated billing. Different from "customers" - that word is reserved for the merchant's buyers.

Shopper (consumer)

The end payer who completes a payment at checkout. This is distinct from a customer, which is the merchant's stored buyer record.

Profile

A merchant's configuration container, holding a trading name, branding, website and a set of payment methods (along with settings associated with it). A merchant can hold several profiles for different storefronts or markets.

Mollie Business Account

An EMI-based bank-account equivalent for a merchant, used to store balances, issue cards and make withdrawals or payouts. (Beta)

Marketplace

A Connect configuration where the platform is the payment owner and distributes a single payment across multiple sellers using routes, keeping a commission and the chargeback liability.

Authentication and connection

OAuth

The open authorization standard that lets a platform act on a merchant's behalf (using tokens), without the merchant having to share their credentials. Translates into "authenticate and act on behalf of."

Authorization URL

The OAuth URL (client_id, redirect_uri, response_type, scope, state) that sends a merchant to the Mollie consent screen. You can construct it by hand or use a Client Link, which pre-fills the merchant's details and supports co-branded onboarding (recommended).

Client Link

API-driven way to onboard and connect merchants using the Client Links API. It creates a new organization for the merchant, pre-fills their business data and supports co-branded onboarding, without hand-building an authorization URL.

Scope (permission)

A granular grant (e.g., payments.write, balances.read etc) that defines what a platform may do on behalf of a connected account. Adding scopes later requires the merchant to reconnect.

Access token

A short-lived credential (60 minutes) used to call the API on a connected account's behalf, obtained by exchanging an authorization code or a refresh token.

Refresh token

A persistent credential used to mint new access tokens. Store it encrypted;
invalid_grant on refresh signals the merchant disconnected.

Advanced access token

An advanced token with configurable permissions that can access organization-level resources and optionally a specific profile. Used for server-to-server actions such as balance transfers and MCP access. Created under Developers tab > API access tokens.

Idempotency

Sending a unique key with write requests so that retries do not create duplicates. It is essential for de-duplicating payments, Client Links and merchant or profile creation.

Onboarding and verification

Onboarding

The end-to-end process of getting a merchant verified and able to transact, covering business and identity data, document checks and Mollie's review.

Onboarding model

How the KYB experience is delivered: Direct (in Mollie), Hosted (a Mollie-hosted link inside your flow), Embedded (a Mollie component in your UI) or Reliance (your licensed process shares verified data with Mollie).

KYB (Know Your Business)

The verification of a business's identity, ownership and activity that Mollie performs before a merchant can process payments or initiate settlements.

KYC (Know Your Customer)

Identity verification of an individual. Relevant if Mollie extends onboarding beyond businesses.

Reliance onboarding

A model where a licensed partner performs KYB or KYC and passes verified data to Mollie through the API.

Capability

What actions an organization is allowed to do, read through the Capabilities API (beta).
Connect exposes the payments and settlements capabilities. Each has a status of unrequested, enabled, disabled, or pending and a requirements list (for example needs-data or process-first-payment) describing what must be done to enable it. The payments capability is enabled if at least one of the organization's profiles can accept payments.

Onboarding status

How far a merchant is in the verification process. Expressed through each capability's status and requirements, not a single value.

Funds movement

Balance mutation

Any single change to a balance, recorded as a credit or a debit. Every money event is one mutation with a specific type; the primitive describes the mechanism and the type describes the purpose.

Credit and debit

The two directions of a balance mutation. Credit increases a balance (e.g., payments); debit decreases it (e.g., payouts, fees).

Movement primitives

A pay-in is a credit from outside coming into Mollie, an internal transfer moves funds between two Mollie balances (see balance transfer and route) and a payout is a debit from Mollie to outside.

Rail (instrument)

How a pay-in or payout is executed: card, direct debit, bank transfer (SEPA credit transfer), wallet, internal ledger or card scheme. The rail is a separate axis from the movement, which is why a "bank transfer" is a rail and not a balance transfer.

Money in (pay-ins)

Pay-in

Money moving into the Mollie ecosystem, recorded as a credit. It is the umbrella primitive for collections and its named types include payment, recurring payment and top-up.

Payment

A single pay-in where a shopper pays a merchant online or in person, via the Payments API. It is the most common inbound event that can carry an optional application fee or route instructions.

Recurring payment

A pay-in collected automatically on a schedule against a stored mandate. This is the movement of funds, while subscription or mandate is the parent construct that schedules it.

Top-up

A pay-in where an account holder adds their own funds to their Mollie balance or Mollie Business Account, for example to pre-fund payouts. "Top-up" is the canonical term and "deposit" is an alias.

Money held and internal movement (transfers)

Balance

The funds an organization holds at Mollie, including pending and available amounts. It can be read in a bank-feed format through the Balances API for reconciliation.

Holding balance

In marketplaces, the compliant balance where a payment sits before being distributed through routes, which enables collect-then-route (delayed) flows.

Balance transfer

Moving funds between two Mollie organizations (e.g., platform and merchant), where both parties already own those balances. It stays inside Mollie and is used for fees, royalties and corrections, with documented consent. Requires an advanced access token.

Route

(Marketplaces) A balance transfer linked to a specific payment that distributes one shopper payment across multiple sellers, plus the platform's commission.

Delayed routing

Providing route instructions after a payment is paid, allowing funds to be held until certain conditions are met. Recommended approach (Alternatively, upfront routing (legacy), fixes the split at checkout).

Gross settlement

A model used along with delayed routing where marketplaces can route the full payment amount, while Mollie calculates and invoices transaction and routing fees separately (usually monthly).

Money out (payouts)

Payout

Sending funds to a third party's bank, mirroring payment on the inbound side. The own-bank variants get their own names, settlement and withdrawal. Its alias is "disbursement".

Settlement

The scheduled, automatic payout of an organization's balance to its own external bank account, reported through the Settlements API.

Withdrawal

An on-demand movement of an account's own funds to its own bank account, typically from a Mollie Business Account.

Card spend

A payout (debit) where a cardholder spends funds stored on a Mollie Business Account balance using a virtual card.

Fees, monetization and billing

Fee

Money that Mollie or a platform deducts from a balance as the cost of a service, recorded as a debit. It has a distinct type, such as processing fee, application fee, service fee, or resell margin.

Processing fee

Mollie's own per-transaction fee, deducted from a balance or invoiced. It is the basis of the platform's margin under resell or wholesale pricing.

Application fee

A platform-set fee added to a payment and moved to the platform's balance when the payment succeeds. The connected account remains liable for refunds and fees.

Resell margin

The difference between Mollie's buy rate and the rate a platform charges its merchants, earned by the platform on each payment and reported in the transaction margin report.

Service fee

A Mollie fee for a specific service event, such as a refund fee or a chargeback fee, deducted from the relevant balance.

Billing charge

A monthly fee invoice raised to a merchant, usually through Connect Billing. Includes country-sepcific merchant VAT settings and branding.

Buy rate

The wholesale price Mollie charges a platform for a payment method. The platform's margin is the difference between the buy rate and the price it charges merchants. The same buy rate is the cost subtracted when computing partner net revenue.

Margin

The platform's revenue on a payment, calculated as the difference between the buy rate and the charged rate, reported for reconciliation.

Monetization configuration

The commercial model a platform uses: Revenue Share (Mollie sets the price and invoices after), Managed Pricing (Mollie sets the price and a platform adds application fees) or Wholesale (platform marks up buy rates).

Connect Billing

When Mollie automatically invoicing merchants for processing fees on the platform's behalf using itemized invoices.

Segment

A distinct group of merchants, for example grouped by size, region or agreement, used to apply distinct resell margin rates in bulk. Segments are hidden from merchants and are managed by platform.

Payment methods

Payment method

The way a shopper can pay, such as using iDEAL, cards, Bancontact, PayPal etc. Methods are offered at the platform level and are enabled per profile.

Hosted checkout

Mollie's prebuilt, conversion-optimized payment page that a shopper is redirected to, returning to your redirectUrl once the payment reaches its final state.

Payment link

A shareable URL or QR code that opens a branded checkout, allowing merchants to get paid without adding any code, across any channel.

Reversals and adjustments

Refund

Returning funds to the shopper, fully or partially, via the Refunds API. In marketplaces this can trigger reverse routing to reclaim amounts already distributed to sellers.

Chargeback

A forced reversal initiated by a shopper's bank. Liability sits with the connected account in the platform model, or with the marketplace in the marketplace model. Handling differs by configuration.

Reverse routing

Reclaiming routed funds from seller balances when a routed payment is refunded, using reverseRouting for a full refund or routingReversals for a partial one (via Refunds API).

Reversal

Undoing a balance transfer or route so that funds return to the originating balance. It is the internal counterpart to a refund, which returns funds outbound to a shopper.

Adjustment

A manual credit or debit correction applied to a balance by Mollie or a platform, used for fixes, penalties or reconciliation discrepancies.

Risk and compliance

SCA (Strong Customer Authentication)

A PSD2 requirement for multi-factor verification of certain payments, often through 3-D Secure. Platforms need to understand where SCA responsibility sits within their flows.

PSD2

The EU payments regulation governing authentication and who may handle funds. It determines whether a platform is "in the money flow" and what kind of licensing it needs.

In the money flow

A compliance state where a platform receives or controls third-party funds, which generally requires its own licensing. Connect is designed (through OAuth, routes, and balance transfers) to keep platforms out of it.

Partner reporting and analytics

The Insights Metrics page holds the canonical formulas and field names for these metrics. We mirror them here for shared understanding and link out for the source of truth, rather than redefining them.

Partner (analytics)

A merchant carrying a partner flag. How the partner is integrated (signup link, user-agent, or OAuth) determines which payments belong to their portfolio.

Sub-merchant

A merchant whose payments are attributed to a partner. It is the same entity as a connected account, seen from the partner's reporting view.

Portfolio

The full set of sub-merchants attributed to a partner, and the default level at which partner analytics aggregate.

Attribution

How a payment is linked to a partner, using three signals: signup link, user-agent, and OAuth. A payment can match up to three partner IDs, and matches are de-duplicated.

Primary currency

The partner's reporting currency. All amount fields are converted to it at the daily exchange rate before partner-level metrics are shown.

Paid volume

The sum of successfully paid payment amounts across a partner's sub-merchants, in the original currency. It is sub-merchant revenue and a volume signal, not partner revenue.

Actionable payments

Payments that reached a terminal paid or failed state. They are the denominator for payment success rate.

Gross revenue (partner)

A partner's earnings before Mollie's costs, made up of application fees plus commissions. It is often shown as a split between those two components.

Net revenue (partner)

Gross revenue after Mollie's costs, calculated as gross revenue minus buy rate and volume fees. This is the figure that maps to partner payouts.

Commission

Partner revenue earned per transaction, typically a kickback under a revenue-share or commission-type partnership. It is a component of partner gross revenue.

Volume fees

Additional volume-based fees Mollie charges the partner per transaction. They are deducted when calculating net revenue.

ATV (average transaction value)

Paid volume divided by payments paid, showing the typical payment size across the portfolio.

Payment success rate

Payments paid divided by actionable payments, showing the share of real attempts that completed.

Fail rate

Payments failed divided by payments created, a signal for integration or payment-method issues.

Cancel rate

Payments canceled by shoppers divided by payments created, indicating checkout friction.

Expiry rate

Payments that expired divided by payments created, indicating shoppers who started but never completed.

Abandon rate

Canceled plus expired payments divided by payments created, the broadest measure of checkout drop-off.

Refund rate

Refunds divided by payments paid, a signal for returns or disputes across the portfolio.

Reconciliation and events

Virtual IBAN (vIBAN)

A dedicated IBAN assigned to a merchant's profile for receiving bank transfers into their Mollie balance, which improves matching and is compliant with Verification of Payee.

Unmatched credit transfer

A bank transfer that Mollie could not automatically match to an open payment. Through the API or a webhook you can match it to one or more payments, or return it to the sender.

Settlement reference

The identifier that links transactions to a specific settlement, used as a join key when reconciling Mollie data against bank statements and ERP entries.

Event

A notification of a change such as a payment, route, transfer, or onboarding update, delivered to your endpoint through Mollie's webhooks. Newer events use the next-generation webhooks framework and carry an event_ id.

Webhook

The HTTPS endpoint that receives events. Configure it per payment or globally, and use it instead of polling to track status changes and reconciliation triggers.