ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Terminated merchant file

Imagine you have your own lemonade stand and you sell delicious lemonade every day. People love your lemonade and you make lots of money from it. But one day, you forget to buy more lemons and you have to tell your customers that you are all out of lemonade.

This is kind of like what happens with the Terminated Merchant File (TMF). TMF is a list of businesses that can no longer accept credit card payments. When a business breaks the rules of accepting credit card payments or goes bankrupt, the credit card companies add them to the TMF list.

Just like you couldn't sell any more lemonade when you ran out of lemons, businesses on the TMF list can't accept credit card payments anymore. Being on the TMF list is bad news for a business because it means they can't make money from credit card payments anymore. It's like having your lemonade stand shut down because you didn't follow the rules.

In summary, the Terminated Merchant File is a list of businesses that can't accept credit card payments anymore because they broke the rules or went bankrupt. It's like your lemonade stand getting shut down because you didn't follow the rules.