M-Commerce
Mobile electronic commerce, i.e. online sales over cellular telephones and wireless computers.

Macro Variable
A variable that is part of the macro programming language. The value of a macro variable is a string that remains constant until you change it. Macro variables are sometimes referred to as symbolic variables.

Magnetic Information Character Recognition
Acronym for Magnetic Information Character Recognition. Imprinted banking numbers at the bottom of the cheque which may include routing/transit number, account number, cheque number

Magnetic Information Character Recognition (MICR)
Imprinted banking numbers at the bottom of the cheque which may include routing/transit number, account number, cheque number.

Magnetic Stripe
The magnetic stripe on the reverse of a credit card, containing account details such as account number and expiration date.

Magnetic Tapes
Magnetic tape is the cheapest method to store data although retrieval is problematic since data files are stored sequentially (one after the other). Magnetic tape is typically used for data backups and to send information from one computer to another.

Mail Order or Telephone Order
A Transaction initiated by the customer using the mail or telephone, rather than through retail terminals or the Internet.

Mail Shop
An independent company that specialises in preparing materials for mailing. These companies affix labels, sort for bulk rates, prepare bag tags, insert in postal bags, etc.

Mailbot
A program that automatically sends or answers e-mail.

Mailing List
A list of customers or prospects used to mail catalogues or sale announcements to. This is not a marketing database, as it does not provide for a two-way communication with customers.

Mainframe
The largest computers used in business applications. These require raised floors and special air conditioning. Mainframes are recommended for large databases or applications, due to their power, input-output capability and speed, measured in MIPS.

Management Information System (MIS)
The system that produces management reports that enable analytical, strategic and business decisions.

MAND
Acronym for Money, Authority, Need and Desire, which are the requisites of a qualified lead.

Manual Scoring
The scoring of each application by hand.

Marginal Contribution
The additional contribution of a characteristic to the strength of the overall scoring model.

Marginal Tax Rate
The top rate of income tax charged to individuals based on their last unit of earnings.

Marital Status
The state of being unmarried, married, or separated, as defined by applicable state law. The term unmarried includes persons who are single, divorced, or widowed.

Market Capitalisation
The total value of a company, as measuered by stock market value. See Capitalisation.

Market Crash
The sudden fall in prices on a stock market.

Market Depth
The extent to which business which can be done without causing major price disturbance and which reflects market liquidity.

Market Forces
The conditions of supply and demand which operate in a free market to determine prices through the decisions of buyers and sellers, lenders and borrowers.

Market Penetration
The percentage of buyers that a company has, as compared with the total households or businesses in the area that you have selected as your market.

Market Rate of Interest
The cost of borrowing money by your company from banks or other institutions. In discount rate computations, this amount is usually doubled to account for risk.

Market Research
This is statistical analysis of customer data to draw overall conclusions, as a basis for action.

Market Risk
The potential for investors to incur losses owing to daily fluctuations and volatility in market prices.

Market Share
A company`s percentage of the market, based on how many people or companies regularly purchase its product or service. Also see Critical Mass.

Market Value
The market value is the selling value of items or goods at a point in time. This value is determined by the price that buyers are willing to pay for similar goods or items.

Marketability
Speed and ease with which a security may be bought or sold.

Marketing
A management process that identifies, anticipates and supplies consumer requirements efficiently and effectively.

Marketing Mix
The mix of decisions about product features, prices, communications and distribution of products used by a marketing manager to position products competitively within the minds of consumers.

Marking Myopia
A business defined purely in terms of its goods and services rather that in terms of the benefits which customers seek.

Markoff Model
A model used for bad debt provisioning and prediction of write-off, using roll rate analysis.

MARS
Abbreviation for Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines. An algorithm, combining regression and tree techniques, to optimise the fit of a dependent variable using the least squares method

Masked
Data or functions that are permanently loaded into the chip on the smart card. See Smart Card.

Mass Marketing
This is selling to everyone through mass media such as radio, TV, or newspapers, as opposed to database marketing, which is aimed at a small selected audience.

Master File
A data set containing account or customer financial and demographic information.

MasterCard
One of the major bankcard schemes. Previously known as MasterCharge in the US, Access in the UK and currently known as Eurocard in continental Europe.

MasterCharge
The name formerly given to MasterCard.

Match Code
This is an extract of the name and address used to identify a specific record. It is used in de-duping. See Keyline.

Match Key
This is a combination of numbers and letters, usually beginning with the postal code, which is used as a rough household duplicate eliminator. See Keyline.

Maturity Date
The date on which a policy or investment is paid to the investor and interest payments, if any, cease. See Due Date.

Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE)
A method of parameter estimation for calculating expected cross-tabulation cell frequencies.

Maximum Spread
Refers to the maximum distance between cumulative good and bad distributions by score. Usually expressed in percentage terms.

MB
Megabyte. 2 20 bytes represents 1024 KB.

Mb
Megabit (128KB).

MCC
A merchant classification code which identifies the merchant by type of processing, authorisation and settlement. See Merchant Category Code.

mCommerce
Also known as Mobile Commerce. Using wireless Point of Sale swipe terminals, cellular phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA`s) to process transactions.

Mean
The arithmetic average of a population or a sample of observations. Also known as the Arithmetic Average.

Media
Communications channels that convey messages, such as radio, TV, newspapers, magazines and direct mail.

Megabyte
A million bytes. Disks are rated in megabytes.

Member Bank
A financial institution that is an actual member of Visa and MasterCard and responsible for settling transactions with Visa/MasterCard-issuing banks, resolving chargeback issues, and adhering to Visa/MasterCard regulations. Also see Processor.

Membership Fees
Fees levied for some form of club membership. In return for this fee, customers are usually entitled to benefits, for example, receiving monthly in-house magazines and product discounts.

Memory
Also known as RAM. The computer`s temporary memory. This is erased when the user turns off the computer.

Memory
Computer term. The amount of information that a computer can hold whilst operating. With expanded memory, the computer works faster and can process highly complex programs.

Memory Card
Smart card that stores and retrieves serial "streams" of data that are sent to or received from the semiconductor chip.

Merchant
A business or organisation that accepts credit cards as payment products or services provided. Each merchant is assigned a unique identification known as a Merchant ID Number.

Merchant Account Initiation
A full-cycle credit management system. It statistically credits scores and rates new merchant applications and tracks accounts from the date of commencement of the contract to its achievement. It includes an on-going profitability analysis, and retains a paperless credit file online.

Merchant Account Provider
A third party company providing merchants with merchant accounts.

Merchant Acquirer
A member that has entered into an agreement with a merchant to accept deposits generated by bankcard transactions; also called the acquirer or acquiring bank.

Merchant Agreement
The written contract between merchant and acquirer which details their respective rights, responsibilities, and warranties.

Merchant Category Code
A merchant classification code which identifies the merchant by type of processing, authorisation and settlement.

Merchant Fraud
The act of submitting sales drafts which are not the result of legitimate sales for the purpose of defrauding the services, the client bank, or individual cardholders. Fraud includes knowingly accepting lost, stolen, or counterfeit credit cards.

Merchant Number
A number that numerically identifies each merchant to the merchant processor for accounting and billing purposes.

Merchant Outlet
The physical premises of the merchant at which a transaction is consummated.

Merchant Sales Agreement
The written contractual agreement between a merchant and a clearing/funding member bank. This agreement contains their respective rights, duties, and warranties with respect to the acceptance of credit, debit, or charge cards and payment system processing.

Merchant Service Charge
The discount rate or other fees assessed by the acquirer.

Merchant Settlement Amount
The net Rand amount for each business day of card transactions processed, less charge backs debited to the merchants and other debits or credits to the merchants.

Merchant Station Plate
A metal embossed plate to be attached to the imprinter machine and used for imprinting sales slips and batch headers/summaries. Embossed data includes merchant name, account number, city, and may include service entitlement numbers or current account number.

Merge/Purge
A software system used to merge many different input tapes in differing formats and put them into a common format for a mailing. Merge/Purge detects duplicates.

Merger
A combination of two or more corporations.

Metadata
All of the information in the data warehouse environment that is not the actual data itself. Metadata is often divided between process-related "back room" metadata, which guides the extraction, cleaning, and loading process, and descriptive "front room" metadata that helps query tools and report writers function smoothly.

MICR
Abbreviation for Magnetic Information Character Recognition. Imprinted banking numbers at the bottom of the cheque which may include routing/transit number, account number, cheque number.

Micro-Computer
This is another name for a Personal Computer.

Microchips
These are the ‘brains’ powering computer systems with chip processing speeds varying according to age and make. Also known as Chips.

Microprocessor Card
Contains a microprocessor chip with a microcode that defines a command structure, a data file structure and a security structure in the card.

Migration
The process of moving a database from one platform (such as an external service bureau) to another (such as an in-house mainframe). When an outsourcing decision is made, companies should always look ahead to ensure that you they can migrate at some later date.

Milling
A customer makes one qualifying payment that will keep him in the same delinquency state from one month to the next month.

Millions of Instructions Per Second (MIPS)
This is the measurement of the relative speed of a mainframe computer.

Mini
These are computers that are smaller than Mainframe computers. They may also need raised floors and air conditioning. They are less expensive than Mainframes, but generally do not have the power or input-output capability to manage a large database.

Minimum Acceptable Score
The minimum score that applicants must achieve in order to be accepted.

Minimum Balance
The amount of money that must be maintained in an account at all times.

MIPS
Acronym for Millions of Instructions Per Second. This is the measurement of the relative speed of a mainframe computer.

MIS
Abbreviation for Management Information System. The system that produces management reports that enable analytical, strategic and business decisions.

Misclassification Cost
The cost of misclassifying a class “j” object as a class “i” object. The costs may vary across object classes, e.g., the cost of misclassifying a “Bad” as a “Good” may be higher than the reverse.

Missing Data
The situation where variables may have missing values, due to illegibility, lost or never recorded data.

Missing Values
Values that are absent from a field.

MLE
Abbreviation for Maximum Likelihood Estimation. A method of parameter estimation for calculating expected cross-tabulation cell frequencies.

MMS
Also known as Multimedia Messaging Service which allows users to send and receive multimedia messages with a mobile telephone.

Mobile Commerce
Also known as mCommerce. Using wireless Point of Sale swipe terminals, cellular phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA`s) to process transactions.

Mobile Telecommunications
A form of telecommunications using wireless devices.

Model
Short for Predictive Model, a structure and process for predicting the values of specified variables in a data set.

Model Integration Table
A lookup table relating the outputs of a linear or non-linear discriminant analysis to the probabilities of class membership. Also known as a Probability Table.

Model Risk
The risk of loss due to weaknesses in the financial model/s being used by a business.

Modelling
A statistical technique to determine which data elements in a database can be used to explain and predict customer behaviour.

Modem
A device permitting a PC or terminal to send information over a telephone line. A modem must be present at both ends of the telephone line for the communication to work.

Modification
A change that is made to the terms of the loan agreement.

Modulus-10
An algorithm used to generate random numbers, such as account numbers.

Monetary Value
Used within an RFM model, this is how much has the customer spent in the last 3, 6, 12 months or lifetime?

Money Laundering
The illegal process of passing illicit funds through an account, (or several accounts), to disguise the original source of the funds.

Money Market
The securities market dealing in short-term debt and monetary instruments. Money-market instruments are forms of debt that mature in less than one year and are very liquid. Treasury bills make up the bulk of money-market instruments. Securities in the money market are relatively risk free.

Money Transfers
The movement of funds or securities from one participant to another. This can include the physical conveyance of money or it can be an accounting entry.

Monitoring
The business function of producing regular management reports, in order to control the scorecards and lending functions. Examples of standard reports include: Population Stability Report, Characteristic Analysis Report, Override Analysis Report, Final Score Report, Dynamic Delinquency Reports. Also known as Tracking.

Mono-application Smart Card
A smart card that can only handle one application.

Monotonic
Designating sequences whose successive members either consistently increase or decrease but do not oscillate in relative value.

Monte Carlo Simulation
A technique for approximating a probability distribution by generating uniformly distributed pseudo random numbers and transforming these into the required set of random numbers.

Month-end Report
A report that is produced at month-end, rather than at cycle billing.

Monthly Payment
The amount of money due on a monthly basis to satisfy a loan obligation. An instalment account will show a calculated amount relative to the original amount divided by the terms, a revolving account will display an estimated amount. Exception cases are zeros = not on file, 9s = maximum value.

Monthly Periodic Rate
An interest rate factor that is used to calculate the interest charges on a monthly basis.

Monthly Rebate
A monthly rebate is the amount by which a loan agreement can be reduced on a monthly basis, provided certain conditions are met.

Months Open
The number of months that an account has been open, calculated from the date it was opened.

Months Reported
The number of months that an account has been reported by a creditor.

Months Status
The number of months that a specific status has been reported on an account.

Mortgage
A mortgage is a promise whereby property is used as security for a loan. In many US states, the mortgage document is called a "deed of trust."

Mortgage Backed Security
A bond or other financial obligation secured by a pool of mortgage loans.

Mortgage Banker
A lender, other than a bank, credit union, or savings and loan, that specializes in making residential mortgage loans.

Mortgage Loan
A loan secured by a mortgage on your home.

Mortgage or Bond
An agreement between an applicant and the bank, stating that the bank will lend applicant a certain amount of money in the form of a home loan, and that the applicant will pay the bank back over a certain period, on a monthly basis, and at a certain interest rate.

Motherboard
The main circuit board of a computer.

Mouse
A device that is connected to your computer and used to reposition the cursor or move the pointer on your screen.

Moving Average
An average showing trends for the latest interval. Often used in the measurement of security or commodity prices constructed on a period as short as a few days or as long as several years.

MP3
Abbreviation for MPEG-1, Audio Layer 3 and MPEG, which stands for Moving Pictures Expertise Group. MP3 is a standard that translates digitally recorded music into data files.

MRAM
Magnetic Random Access Memory.

Multi Co-Linearity
The situation where some of the independent variables are highly correlated.

Multi-Application Card
A smart card that can accommodate more than one application while maintaining separate security conditions.

Multi-application Smart Card
A smart card that can handle a diversity of applications.

Multi-Buyer
A person who crops up on two or more independent rented lists. Multi-Buyers usually respond better to a direct offer than other buyers.

Multi-Dimensional
The situation where observations have multiple variables, whose values help to distinguish one observation from another. Also known as Multivariate.

Multilevel
The ability to protect information with different levels of sensitivity and different access permission rules on the same computer system.

Multiple Linear Regression
A form of regression whereby the formula is linear and contains many variables in addition to the dependent variable.

Multiple R
A measure of the effectiveness of a regression model. Binary variables with a value 1 or 0 are used to represent the coarse classed attributes of the scorecard variables.

Multiple Regression
A statistical technique used in modelling whereby you develop a formula, which explains the relationship between several variables in explaining customer behaviour.

Multiple Regression Correlation Coefficient
The multiple regression correlation coefficient is a measure of the proportion of variability explained by, or due to the regression (linear relationship) in a sample of paired data. It is a number between zero and one and a value close to zero suggests a poor model.

Multivariate
The situation where observations have multiple variables, whose values help to distinguish one observation from another. Also known as Multi-Dimensional.

Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS)
An algorithm, combining regression and tree techniques, to optimise the fit of a dependent variable using the least squares method.