Glossary
Velocity limit
A velocity limit caps how many payments, or how much, may pass in a time window for one key: a card number, a payer, a merchant or a terminal. Ten attempts per card per hour, a daily amount per merchant, a monthly volume per terminal that mirrors the acquirer's contract. It stops card testing, account takeover and runaway merchants, and it keeps each terminal inside what its provider allows.
Choosing the keys and windows
Per card and per payer against fraud; per merchant against structuring and against a merchant exceeding its profile; per terminal against breaching the provider’s caps. Windows from minutes to a month. Limits should be set from the merchant’s real traffic with headroom, reviewed with volume, and different for a gaming operator and a school.
What happens at the limit
The payment is declined before any provider is called, or routed to another terminal that has room, depending on the key: a terminal limit sends traffic elsewhere, a card or merchant limit stops it. The decline reason is kept so the support team can explain it.
On the platform
Tranzify’s limits per merchant and terminal and its routing conditions enforce velocity rules before a provider is called: a terminal at its cap drops out of the route group for the window, a merchant at its daily amount is stopped, and every limit hit is recorded in the journal with its reason.
Updated: 2026-11-08