| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Account | A customer’s brokerage account at the broker, named by its account code. See Open an account. |
| Allocation | A move of money from your wallet to one account. See Wallet. |
| Application | A request to open an account for a customer. See Open an account. |
| Bank reference | The bank’s own reference for one transfer, such as an instant transfer’s session ID. A credit carries it as bank_reference. See Find the credit. |
| Bonus shares | Shares a company issues to its shareholders without payment. They’re credited to the customer’s CSCS account. See Dividends and bonus shares. |
| Booked | An allocation the broker has added to the account’s balance. |
| Business day | A day from Monday to Friday. Our replies and payments count business days. If a Nigerian public holiday falls in the period, ask us when to expect them. |
| BVN | Bank Verification Number: the number that identifies a customer across Nigerian banks. |
| Consideration | The value of the shares a trade exchanged: quantity times price, before charges. See After a fill. |
| Contract note | The broker’s record of a settled trade, with its charges. See After a fill. |
| Credit | A payment of yours, recorded in your wallet. See Fund an account. |
| CSCS | Central Securities Clearing System: the depository that holds the customer’s shares, in an account in their name. |
| Cursor | Where a page of a list ends. Pass a response’s next_cursor as cursor to get the next page. |
| Dividend | A company’s payment to its shareholders. The company’s registrar pays cash dividends into the bank account on the customer’s e-dividend mandate, not through the API. See Dividends and bonus shares. |
| Estimate | What an order would cost or pay, from POST /v1/orders/estimate: the most a buy can cost, never a price to show. See Estimate the order. |
| ETF | An exchange-traded fund. The only securities the broker takes limit orders for. See Order types. |
| Event | A record of a change to an order, an application or an allocation. See Webhooks. |
| Exchange, in error codes | Codes named exchange_* and cancel_unconfirmed are about our connection to the broker, which places orders on the exchange. |
| Expired | An order whose time in force ended before it filled. It’s final. See Order states. |
| Gateway | The Matamba Gateway: the API you call, and the service behind it that records each request and sends it to the broker. The sandbox and live are separate gateways, each with its own host. |
| Idempotency key | The header that makes a retry safe: once we’ve stored a request, every retry with the same key answers about that request instead of making a duplicate. See Idempotency. |
| Kobo | A hundredth of a naira. Amounts in the API are integers in kobo, so ₦475.00 is 47500. A field ending in _kobo_decimal, such as average_fill_price_kobo_decimal, is a decimal string of kobo. |
| LGA | Local Government Area, the level of government below a state. lga_of_origin takes a code from GET /v1/reference/states/{state}/lgas. |
| Live | The environment that trades real money on the exchange. |
| NIN | National Identification Number. |
| Operations team | Our staff who reconcile uncertain orders, applications and allocations with the broker and record what it confirms, from 9:00 to 17:00 WAT, Monday to Friday. See How it resolves. |
| Partner | You: the company that uses the API, holds its keys and wallet, and opens accounts for its customers. |
| Payer reference | The reference we give you to put in every transfer’s narration, so we know a payment is yours. It doesn’t change. See Fund an account. |
| Pending debits | Money the broker holds against an account, as the broker reports it: pending_debits_kobo on GET /v1/accounts/{account}/balance. In the sandbox, the cash held for open buy orders. |
| Position | The shares of one symbol an account holds, as the broker reports them in GET /v1/accounts/{account}/positions. |
| Post | A wallet ledger entry: the broker booked an allocation, so its reserved amount is now allocated. See Read the ledger. |
| Price limits | The band a security can trade in on the day. A market order is priced at its edge. See Order types. |
| Reference | The broker’s reference for an application, in its reference once the broker has it. See Read the answer. |
| Refused | Never reached the broker or the exchange. Compare rejected. |
| Registrar | The company that keeps a listed company’s register of shareholders and pays its cash dividends. See Dividends and bonus shares. |
| Rejected | The broker or the exchange received it and refused it, or, for an allocation, our operations team confirmed the broker didn’t book it. reject_reason says why. |
| Reserved | Money set aside in your wallet for an allocation that isn’t yet booked. |
| Rights issue | An offer of new shares to a company’s shareholders. The API doesn’t take part. See Rights issues. |
| Sandbox | The test environment: its own host and keys, test money, and no exchange. See Sandbox. |
| Scope | What a key may do: read, trade, fund or apply. See Keys and security. |
| Settlement | The exchange of shares and cash after a trade. Equities settle one business day after the trade date (T+1). See After a fill. |
| Settlement lockout | A window while the day’s trades settle, when the broker can refuse orders, estimates, allocations and reads. See Trading hours. |
| Technical contact | The person at your company who receives our notices and one-time links, and whose requests to take money out we act on. See Get access and support. |
| Ticket | The broker’s number for one trade. A contract note carries the ticket of its trade. See After a fill. |
| Time in force | How long an order stays open: day, gtc, ioc or fok. See Time in force. |
| Trade | The broker’s record of a fill, in GET /v1/accounts/{account}/trades. See After a fill. |
| Uncertain | Sent, and its receipt not confirmed. We never resubmit it, and our operations team reconciles it. See Handle an uncertain result. |
| Unplaced | An application the broker does not hold: it never received it, or it refused it with a reason it doesn’t publish. Our operations team records it. It’s final. See Application states. |
| Unresolved | An order or an allocation that is uncertain, or still sending after its request has ended. Its outcome at the broker is not recorded yet. See Identical orders and Identical allocations. |
| Void | A wallet ledger entry: an allocation didn’t book, so its amount is returned to your wallet. See Read the ledger. |
| Wallet | Our ledger of the money you’ve paid in and what you’ve allocated from it. See Wallet. |
| WAT | West Africa Time, Nigeria’s time zone: one hour ahead of UTC all year. Times of day on these pages are WAT. Timestamps in the API are UTC, and dates such as trade_date are WAT days. |
| Webhook endpoint | Your HTTPS URL that receives events. See Webhooks. |
| Withdrawal | Money out of a customer’s account, which you ask us for by email: not in the API yet. Money in your wallet can’t be taken out yet. See Take money out. |
Glossary
The terms these pages use, each in a line, with the page that explains it.
The terms these pages use, in alphabetical order.