Automatic reconciliation is the practice of matching financial records across systems using software rather than manual review. Rules and matching logic compare transactions automatically, clear the matches that meet set criteria, and flag only genuine exceptions for a person to look at.

Balance reconciliation is the process of confirming that the actual balance in an account matches the expected balance, and that it is sufficient to cover any planned payments. It works at the level of the total figure, not individual transactions, and is especially important for accounts that hold funds on behalf of someone else.

Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) is a model where a licensed bank or financial institution exposes its core banking capabilities through APIs, allowing non-bank companies to embed accounts, payments, cards, and other financial products into their own products without holding a banking license themselves.

The Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) is Circle's permissionless protocol for moving native USDC between blockchains. It burns USDC on the source chain and mints an equivalent amount on the destination chain, verified by Circle's attestation service. No wrapped tokens are created and no funds are locked in a bridge contract.

A cross-chain bridge is a protocol that enables the transfer of assets, data, or messages between two independent blockchain networks. Because blockchains operate as isolated systems with their own rules and validators, bridges are the mechanism that allows value to move from one chain to another.

FedGlobal ACH is a Federal Reserve service that extends the domestic ACH network to cross-border payments, mainly to Mexico and Panama. The Federal Reserve announced in November 2025 that the service will be fully discontinued by the end of 2026 and is no longer open to new sign-ups.

FX risk, also called currency risk or foreign exchange risk, is the potential for financial loss caused by changes in exchange rates between two currencies. It affects any business that sends, receives, or holds money in a currency other than its home currency.

An identity verification API is a software tool that lets a business confirm a person's identity automatically, using document scans, biometric checks, and database lookups. It is the technical layer that performs the checks a KYC program requires, returning a pass, fail, or review result in seconds.

Interbank settlement is the process banks use to finalize payment obligations between each other, usually in central bank money. It is the last step in a payment's journey, where the actual transfer of value happens between the sending bank and the receiving bank.

ISO 20022 is an open global standard for financial messaging that defines how banks, payment networks, and financial institutions exchange payment data. It replaced legacy MT formats across most major payment systems in 2023 to 2025, bringing richer, more structured data to cross-border payments, reporting, and settlement.

A ledger API is the programmatic interface used to interact with a financial ledger: posting transactions, querying balances, creating account structures, and running reconciliations. It is the integration surface that sits on top of the underlying ledger infrastructure, allowing applications to record and retrieve financial data without managing the ledger's internals directly.

Nostro and vostro are two names for the same correspondent bank account, viewed from opposite sides of the relationship. A nostro account is how a bank records money it holds at a foreign bank. A vostro account is how that foreign bank records the same money on its own books.

A stablecoin depeg is when a stablecoin's market price moves away from its target value, almost always $1. Depegs range from brief, minor deviations corrected by arbitrage within minutes, to catastrophic collapses where the peg is never recovered and billions in value are destroyed.

Stablecoin settlement is the process of finalizing a financial obligation using a stablecoin as the settlement asset, instead of moving funds through correspondent banks or clearing houses. It lets institutions settle transactions instantly, 24 hours a day, rather than waiting on banking hours and multi-day clearing cycles.

A subsidiary ledger, or subledger, is a detailed set of accounts that supports a single control account in the general ledger. It records individual transactions, such as each customer's invoices and payments, while the general ledger holds only the summarized total.

A UETR, or Unique End-to-End Transaction Reference, is a 36-character code assigned to a SWIFT payment when it is created. It stays the same through every bank the payment passes through, which is what makes it possible to track the payment from start to finish.