HL Hunt Glossary

3D Secure (3DS)

3D Secure (3DS) provides an additional layer of authentication for credit card transactions that protects businesses from liability for fraudulent card payments.

3D Secure 2 (3DS2)

3D Secure 2 (3DS2) removes friction from the authentication process and improves the purchase experience compared to 3D Secure 1. It's the main card authentication method used to meet Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements.

ACH

Automated Clearing House (ACH) is a US financial network used for electronic payments and money transfers that doesn't rely on paper checks, credit card networks, wire transfers, or cash.

API key

A secret key used to authenticate API requests. HL Hunt provides test and live API keys for development and production environments respectively.

Authorization

The process of verifying that a customer's payment method has sufficient funds and is valid for a transaction. Authorization places a hold on the funds.

Authorization rate

The percentage of card payments approved by card issuers, out of all attempted card payments. Excludes blocked payments and payments that didn't complete 3D Secure authentication.

Automatic capture

Automatically capture funds when a charge is authorized. This is the default behavior for most payment integrations.

Beneficial owner

Individuals with 25% or more equity in a business entity. Required for identity verification during merchant onboarding.

Billing period

The frequency at which invoices are generated and sent to customers. The billing period operates independently of the service period.

Capture (a charge)

The action of collecting payment for an authorized charge. Capturing the charge transfers the money from the customer to you. Can be automatic or manual.

Card network

A network that processes the transactions of a particular card brand, such as Visa, Mastercard, or American Express.

Card-not-present (CNP)

A transaction made remotely without processing a physical card in a card reader. Common CNP transactions include online shopping, recurring payments, and online invoices.

Charge

A charge represents a single attempt to move money into your account. A charge can succeed or fail, and can be refunded after success.

Chargeback

The action taken by a cardholder's bank to debit a business's account in response to a dispute from the cardholder. The debited funds are held until the dispute is resolved.

Checkout session

A Checkout Session represents your customer's session as they pay for one-time purchases or subscriptions. After a successful payment, it contains a reference to the Customer and the successful PaymentIntent.

Client secret

A unique string used with your publishable key to authenticate a request for a single object on the client side. Each client secret is unique to the object it's associated with.

Connected account

A person or business accepting payments or receiving payouts on a platform using HL Hunt's multi-business features.

Credit

A prepaid balance that can be applied to a customer's usage-based billing charges. Credits are consumed before metered charges are billed.

Customer

Customer objects represent customers of your business. They let you reuse payment methods and track multiple payments associated with a single buyer.

Customer portal

A secure, hosted page that lets your customers manage their subscriptions and billing details without you building custom UI.

CVC/CVV

Card verification code — a three- or four-digit number printed directly on a card used to verify the entered card number for card-not-present transactions.

Dispute

A formal complaint filed by a cardholder with their bank regarding a charge. The bank reverses the charge and notifies the merchant to provide evidence.

Dunning

The process of automatically retrying failed subscription payments and sending reminder emails to customers to update their payment method.

Idempotency

The property that an API request can be safely retried without producing duplicate results. Use idempotency keys to prevent accidental double-charges.

Idempotency key

A unique string sent with an API request to ensure the operation is performed only once, even if the request is retried due to network failures.

Invoice

A statement of amounts owed by a customer. Invoices are generated automatically for subscriptions or can be created manually for one-off billing.

Live mode

The production environment where real payments are processed with real money. Requires verified account and active payment processing.

Manual capture

A payment flow where authorization and capture are separate steps. Funds are held during authorization and collected later when you explicitly capture the charge.

Merchant

A business entity that accepts payments through HL Hunt. Each merchant has a unique merchant ID and can be associated with specific processors.

Merchant ID

A unique identifier assigned to each merchant account. Used to route payments and identify the business in the processing network.

Meter

A meter defines what you're measuring for usage-based billing — API calls, storage, compute hours, etc. Each meter has an event_name and aggregation type.

Meter event

A single usage record sent to HL Hunt's ingestion endpoint. Contains the event_name, customer_id, value, and an optional identifier for deduplication.

Multi-business

The ability to manage multiple business entities under a single HL Hunt account, each with its own merchant ID, processor configuration, and transaction history.

Processor

The payment processing engine that handles card and bank account transactions on behalf of your merchant account.

Partial capture

Collecting only part of the amount held on a customer's payment method and releasing the rest. Useful when the final charge amount is less than the authorized amount.

Payment intent

An object that represents your intent to collect a payment. It tracks the lifecycle of the payment process from creation through to completion.

Payment link

A shareable URL that opens a hosted payment page. No code required — create links from the dashboard and share via email, SMS, or social media.

Payment method

A saved payment instrument (card, bank account, etc.) associated with a customer. Can be reused for future payments without re-entering details.

Payout

The transfer of funds from your HL Hunt balance to your external bank account. Payouts can be automatic on a schedule or triggered manually.

Price

A Price object defines the unit cost, currency, and billing cycle for a product. A single product can have multiple prices (e.g., monthly vs. annual).

Processing guard

A system that validates payment requests against business rules before forwarding to the processor. Prevents invalid or unauthorized transactions.

Product

A Product represents a good or service you sell. Products are associated with Prices, which define how much and how often to charge.

Publishable key

A key safe to include in client-side code. Used with Elements and Checkout to tokenize payment information without exposing secret credentials.

Rate limit

The maximum number of API requests allowed per time period. HL Hunt enforces rate limits to ensure platform stability. Current limits: 100 requests per minute per API key on every endpoint, 60,000 per minute per key on the usage-billing meter-event endpoints, 20 checkout-session creations per minute per key, and 300 requests per minute per IP across the platform. See the Rate Limits page.

Recurring payment

A payment that is automatically charged on a regular schedule, such as monthly or annual subscriptions.

Refund

The return of funds to a customer for a previously successful charge. Can be full or partial. Refunds are processed back to the original payment method.

Secret key

A private API key that must never be exposed in client-side code. Used for server-to-server API calls to perform sensitive operations.

Settlement

The process by which authorized funds are actually transferred between banks. Settlement typically occurs 1-2 business days after authorization.

Subscription

A recurring billing arrangement where a customer is automatically charged on a defined schedule for ongoing access to a product or service.

Test mode

A sandbox environment for developing and testing integrations without processing real payments. Uses test API keys and test card numbers.

Test cards

Special card numbers provided for testing payment flows in test mode. Different numbers simulate various outcomes (success, decline, specific errors).

Tokenization

The process of replacing sensitive payment data (like card numbers) with a non-sensitive equivalent (token) that can be safely stored and transmitted.

Usage-based billing

A pricing model where customers are charged based on actual consumption rather than a fixed recurring fee. Tracked via meters and meter events.

Webhook

An HTTP callback that HL Hunt sends to your server when an event occurs (e.g., payment succeeded, subscription cancelled). Enables real-time integrations.

Webhook endpoint

A URL on your server configured to receive webhook event notifications from HL Hunt.

Webhook secret

A signing secret used to verify that webhook payloads genuinely originated from HL Hunt and haven't been tampered with in transit.