Glossary
Alternative payment method (APM)
An alternative payment method, APM, is any way to pay online other than an international card: bank transfers and instant payment rails such as PIX, UPI or BLIK, e-wallets such as PayPal or GoPay, cash vouchers such as Boleto or OXXO, buy-now-pay-later, mobile money such as M-Pesa, and crypto assets. In most of the world they are not alternative at all: they are how people pay, and a merchant without the local methods loses most of the market.
How APMs differ from cards
The flow: many are push payments the payer completes in their own app, so the checkout waits for a confirmation instead of receiving an authorisation. Settlement: often instant or next day, in local currency, through a local provider. Disputes: most have no chargeback; refunds are transfers back. Fees: usually flat or lower than cards, without interchange. Each method has its own provider, rules and status model.
What a platform must do
Know which methods exist in which country, which providers offer them with which operations and currencies, show the right ones to each payer, run each flow on the checkout, map each provider’s statuses and confirmations to one model, and settle and report them next to cards.
On the platform
Tranzify’s catalogue lists the methods by country with their providers, operations and currencies; a client connects a provider as a terminal, routing shows the method to payers in its countries, the hosted checkout runs its flow, and the journal, ledger and reports treat it like any other payment.
Updated: 2026-11-08