Glossary & core concepts
MySplitPay uses a handful of terms consistently across every page — Merchants, MIDs, commissions, ledgers, payouts, and more. This page defines each one and, just as importantly, shows how they fit together. Whether you’re an ISO managing your whole book of business or an account representative tracking what you’re owed, the same vocabulary applies.
New to the platform? Start with the Introduction for the big picture, then use this page as your reference.
How it all fits together
Section titled “How it all fits together”At the top of the platform sits the ISO. An ISO has account representatives who bring on merchants, and each merchant processes through one or more MIDs. That’s the people side of the chain:
The money side has two inflows. Processor reports come in and the platform turns them into commissions, metered by each rep’s split on each MID; credits and deductions are added by the ISO directly. All of these are transactions, and they accumulate in each rep’s ledger — whose balance is settled by a payout, itself a transaction:
The rest of this page defines each term in those two chains.
People & organizations
Section titled “People & organizations”An ISO (Independent Sales Organization) is the top-level business on the platform — a company that resells payment processing and earns a share of the revenue its merchants generate. If you administer an ISO, you manage everything beneath it: your representatives, your merchants and their processing accounts, and how residuals are split.
Account representative
Section titled “Account representative”An account representative (or “rep”) is a salesperson who works under an ISO and brings on merchants. Reps earn commissions on the accounts they’re responsible for, and they get their own view of what they’ve earned and what’s been paid out to them. On the platform you’ll see them managed under Account Reps.
Merchant
Section titled “Merchant”A merchant is a business that accepts payments — the customer at the end of the chain. A merchant is the business itself, not a single processing account. One merchant can process through several accounts (see MID below), all grouped under the one merchant record. Merchants don’t log in to MySplitPay — their ISO and account representative manage the merchant’s accounts on the platform, and merchants deal with them directly.
A MID (Merchant ID) is an individual processing account that belongs to a merchant. A single merchant can have multiple MIDs — for example, one per location, brand, or processor. MIDs are the level at which processing activity, rates, and commissions are actually tracked. MIDs aren’t sensitive identifiers, so the platform shows them in full rather than masking them.
Processor
Section titled “Processor”A processor is the payment processing partner that actually moves the money and reports on the activity. An ISO connects one or more processors, and the data those processors provide is what the platform uses to calculate everything downstream. You manage these connections under Processors.
Money movement
Section titled “Money movement”Residual
Section titled “Residual”A residual is the ongoing share of processing revenue an ISO continues to earn from a merchant’s MID for as long as that account keeps processing. Residuals are the recurring income at the heart of the business — they’re what get divided up and paid out to the people who earned them.
Residual split
Section titled “Residual split”A residual split is the agreed share of a residual that goes to a particular account representative for a given MID. Splits are always shown as percentages (for example, 40%), never as decimals. The split determines how much of a MID’s residual a rep earns, and it can change over time — the platform keeps a history of the rates that have applied.
Commission
Section titled “Commission”A commission is the amount an account representative earns from the accounts they’re responsible for. Commissions are calculated automatically by the platform from processing activity and the residual split that applies — you never compute them by hand. Like splits, commission rates are displayed as percentages. Reps and ISOs both review these under Commissions.
Payout
Section titled “Payout”A payout is the settlement of what a representative is owed — the point where an accumulated ledger balance is actually paid out. Reps see their own history under My Payouts, and ISOs manage payouts across all their reps. Each payout can be documented with a payout statement (see below).
Records & reporting
Section titled “Records & reporting”Report
Section titled “Report”A report is processor data brought into the platform — the file or feed that describes what merchants processed over a period. Reports are the raw input: uploading them is what drives commissions, metered by each rep’s split on each MID. You’ll find these under Reports.
Transaction
Section titled “Transaction”A transaction is any individual money-movement record on a rep’s ledger — a commission, a credit, a deduction, or a payout. Commissions arrive automatically from reports; credits and deductions are added by the ISO; payouts settle the balance. The Transactions page lists them all in one chronological view.
Ledger
Section titled “Ledger”The ledger is the running record of what each account representative has earned and what has been paid to them — in other words, their balance over time. As commissions accrue and payouts go out, the ledger keeps the tally straight. It’s organized around account rep balances and payouts.
Ledger period
Section titled “Ledger period”A ledger period is the time window that commissions and balances are grouped into — for example, a given month. Periods let everyone reason about earnings in consistent chunks: “what was earned this period” versus “what’s outstanding.” Most views let you switch between periods to see how balances built up.
Statement
Section titled “Statement”Statement means slightly different things depending on who you are, but the through-line is the same: a record of activity you can keep for your books.
- Payout statement (reps & ISOs) — the detail behind a single payout, exportable as a CSV pay stub. It documents what a given payout covered and ties back to the ledger entry behind it. Where a payout is the event, the payout statement is the paper trail.
- Report export (ISOs) — on the reporting side, exporting a processor report gives you the underlying activity behind a period’s commissions as a CSV for your own records. See Transaction reporting & statements.