Glossary

PayNow terms, and the distinctions that cause the most confusion.

Pairs that get confused

Five pairs of terms that look similar and are not. Most support tickets trace back to one of these.

Sales vs Net vs Balance	Sales is gross, what customers paid. Net is after tax and fees. Balance is settled net you can withdraw. → Transactions
Billing vs Payouts	Billing is what PayNow charges you. Payouts is what PayNow pays you.
Tags vs Tier Groups	Tags group products for display. Tier groups make upgrades charge only the difference.
Inventory vs Orders	Inventory is what a customer currently has access to. Orders is every transaction they made.
Refund vs Chargeback	A refund is you returning money. A chargeback is the customer's bank taking it, plus a fee, plus a mark against your store.

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A–Z

Adaptive Currency shows and charges prices in the customer's local currency. On by default, free on every plan, and PayNow carries the FX risk. → Adaptive Currency

Affiliate link is a tracked code or URL that pays a partner commission on sales they refer. → Affiliate Links

Chargeback is a customer disputing a payment with their bank rather than asking you. It costs you the revenue and a fee. → Orders

Command placeholder is a token like {customer.steam.id} that PayNow swaps for a real value before your server runs the command. → Commands & Placeholders

Custom variable is a question asked at checkout (colour, name, quantity) whose answer feeds into your commands. → Custom Variables

Deliverable action is what a product does on purchase: run a command, assign a Discord role, issue a gift card, grant a file. → Creating a Product

Gateway fee is charged by the payment processor for handling the card.

Global command runs on an event for every product, not just one. → Global Commands

Headless API is the integration type where you build your own storefront and PayNow handles payment and delivery. → Settings

Inventory is what a customer currently has access to, active or expired. → Managing Customers

Merchant of record means PayNow is the legal seller, so PayNow handles tax collection, remittance and fraud liability rather than you.

Metadata is hidden key-value data on a product or customer, surfaced in webhooks and the API. Never shown to customers.

Module is a dynamic storefront component such as a payment goal, top customers or recent payments. → Webstore

MRR is monthly recurring revenue, shown per customer and across the store. → Analytics

Navlink is a navigation bar button pointing at a tag. → Navlinks

On Expiry Action is what happens when a package expires, and also what happens when you revoke one by hand, since revoking runs the expiry path. Without one, nothing happens on expiry, and a non-expiring package cannot be revoked at all. → Packages FAQ

Owner-only means restricted to the store owner and not grantable by any role. Payouts is the notable example. → Account Payouts vs Store Payouts

Payment descriptor is the text a customer sees on their bank statement. It comes from your Store Name, and an unrecognisable one causes chargebacks. → Settings

Payout account is where your money goes. It belongs to an account, not a store, so one account covers every store it owns. → Account Payouts vs Store Payouts

Platform fee is PayNow's percentage of each sale: 3.5% on Free, 3% on Pro, 2.5% on Business. → Billing

Presentment fields are the presentment_ fields on orders and subscriptions, holding the amount in the currency the customer actually paid. → Adaptive Currency

Settlement is funds becoming withdrawable. Settles In on Transactions shows when.

Slug is the URL-friendly identifier for a store, product or tag. Changing one breaks every link already shared.

Tier group is a ranked ladder of products where upgrades charge only the difference. Rank comes from the order on the Products page, not from price. → Tier Groups

Tipalti is PayNow's payments partner, which handles payout onboarding. → Setting Up Your Payout Account

Trial is a free period before a subscription starts billing. Subscription products only. → Trials

Twig is the templating language used by hosted webstore templates. → Editing Template Files

Upsell is an additional product offered during checkout. → Upselling

Webhook is an event notification sent to Discord as an embed, or to your own endpoint as JSON. → Webhooks