Glossary
A2A payments
Payments that move money directly from one bank account to another, without a card network.
Account-to-account (A2A) payments use bank rails such as instant payment schemes or open banking initiation. The payer approves the transfer in their banking app, and funds move from their account to the merchant's.
Because there is no card scheme involved, there is no interchange, and costs are often lower. There is also no chargeback process in the card sense, so refund and dispute handling is defined by the scheme or the merchant's own policy.