The essential terms for reading the rest of the documentation without getting lost. If you come from
another payments ecosystem, start here.
Payments & collection
| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Payment | A collection attempt. Has a reference (trx.xxx) and a status (pending → complete). See Payments. |
| Authorization URL | The URL of the hosted payment page to which the customer is redirected. |
| Reference | Unique identifier for a Wajub object, prefixed by type: trx. (payment), trf. (transfer), rfd. (refund). |
| Channel | The specific payment method, in country.operator format — e.g. cm.mtn, sn.wave. See Payment methods. |
| Customer | A reusable payer, identified by email or phone. See Customers. |
| Refund | A full or partial reimbursement to the original method. See Refunds. |
| Dispute | A challenge: chargeback (card) or reversal (Mobile Money). See Disputes. |
Mobile Money
| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Mobile Money | E-money account tied to a phone number (MTN MoMo, Orange Money, Wave, M-Pesa…). Dominant payment method in Africa. |
| Wallet | A user's Mobile Money wallet, identified by their number. |
| USSD | The *…# menu through which a customer authorizes a payment without data. |
| Payout / Transfer | An outgoing payment to a wallet. See Transfers. |
| Bulk / Push | A batch of mass payouts. See Push. |
Balance & settlement
| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Balance | Funds held by our licensed payment partner, exposed via the Wajub API as available and pending. See Balance. |
| Settlement | The process by which a complete collection becomes available in the balance held by our licensed partner. |
| Fee | The cost deducted per transaction. See Fees. |
| Reconciliation | Matching your transactions with your accounting statements. See Reports. |
| Split payment | Automatic distribution of a collection among multiple sub-accounts. See Sync. |
Technical & orchestration
| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Orchestration | Intelligent routing of a transaction to the best provider, with fallback. See Orchestration. |
| Waterfall / Fallback | Automatic retry with a backup provider after a failure. See Waterfall. |
| Webhook | A signed HTTP notification sent to your server on every state change. See Webhooks. |
| Idempotency key | A key that ensures a replayed request does not create a duplicate. See Idempotency. |
| Sandbox | The test environment (pk_test.…), with no real money. See Environments. |
| Authorization | The header carrying the public key for standard operations or the private key for sensitive operations (refunds, transfers). |
