Glossary R

Radio Button: Interactive element included in a list when users need to make a mutually exclusive choice. Each option in the list has a round button beside it; when a user clicks the circle, it goes from white to black (showing it’s selected). If a second option is selected, the first one becomes de-selected, because only one item can be selected from the list.

R.A.D.I.U.S.: Remote authentication and dial-in user service. Authentication and accounting system. This checks if information, such as username and password that is passed to the RADIUS server is correct, and then authorizes access to the system.

Real-Time Processing: The action of processing transactions one at a time for immediate approval. Typically real-time processing is done in situations where the merchant wants an authorization immediately such as retail and restaurant locations, and often times in many Internet processing environments.

Rebate/Enhancement Cards: These cards include rebates on merchandise or cash-back offers depending on how much you charge per year. Others cards have enhancements that offer special benefits, like: frequent-flier miles or long-distance telephone discounts. When choosing a rebate card, be sure that the rebates the card provides add up to more than what you might save with a lower interest rate card.

Receipt: A printed record of a transaction with the information often including: merchant name, address, phone number, date and time, amount, approval code, cardholder name, and signature.

Recurring Payments: Payments by an issuer to an acquirer on behalf of a cardholder who authorizes a merchant to bill the cardholder's account on a regular basis (such as monthly or quarterly). The amount of each payment may sometimes be same or may vary.

Recurring Transaction: A periodic transaction authorized by the cardholder. For example, a monthly cable TV payment, insurance payment, where the cardholder has authorized the merchant to charge their account on a predetermined basis.

Refund: Opposite of a purchase transaction, where the cardholder returns goods to the merchant and is credited for the value when purchased. Positive interchange and merchant service charge are reversed.

Re-keying: Process of altering cryptographic keys to lessen the amount of data to be encrypted with the same key.

Retail Banking: The part of a bank's business providing services at its branches for small or individual account holders.

Retail Sale Transaction: Purchase of goods, services, or both, generally at a merchant’s place of business.

Revolve: To carry over a debt from one month to the next, while paying interest on the amount owed.

Revolving Credit: A credit agreement that allows consumers to pay all or part of the outstanding amount owed on a loan or credit card. As credit is paid off, it becomes available again to use for another purchase or cash advance.

R.F.C.: Stands for: request for comments.

Risk Analysis: Process that systematically recognizes valuable system resources and threats; quantifies loss exposures (that is, loss potential) based on estimated frequencies and costs of occurrence; and (optionally) recommends how to allocate resources to countermeasures so as to minimize total exposure. A.k.a. risk assessment.

Router: Hardware or software that connects two or more networks. Functions as sorter and interpreter by looking at addresses and passing bits of information to proper destinations. Software routers are sometimes called gateways.

R.S.A.: Algorithm for public-key encryption described in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Len Adleman at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); letters RSA are the initials of their surnames.

R.T.F.: Rich Text Format. A file format developed by Microsoft which allows documents to be transferred between application programs. Most word processors can process RTF files. RTF files have the file extension ".rtf."