UBO (ultimate beneficiary): Beneficial owner refers to the natural person(s) who ultimately50 owns or controls a customer51 and/or the natural person on whose behalf a transaction is being conducted. It also includes those persons who exercise ultimate effective control over a legal person or arrangement.
TMF (Terminated Merchant File AKA the MATCH List): MATCH is a system created and managed by MasterCard. It is essentially a database that houses information about businesses (and their owners) whose credit card processing privileges have been terminated for reasons which I’ll discuss later.
It is used by acquiring banks (aka merchant processing banks) to screen potential applicants to see if that applicant has been terminated in the past. Acquiring banks also have the ability to add or remove merchants to or from the MATCH database, given they have justification.
In a nutshell, the MATCH file is like a “blacklist” that banks can cross-check when they take on new business. That way, they won’t get stuck with any bad apples.
