A card-not-present (CNP) transaction happens when the physical card is not read with a point-of-sales (POS) terminal. Instead, the card details are communicated to the merchant by the cardholder.
While CNP transactions are most commonly linked to ecommerce stores, purchases made over the phone and through the mail are also considered card-not-present (mail orders and phone orders are commonly referred to as MOTO).
Card-not-present is a more colloquial term used by industry members. Thecard brandsuse more formal phrases such as ‘card absent’ and ‘card absent environment’.
