Terminology for Online Payment Systems

• ACH payments
  ACH stands for Automated Clearing House. It provides customers to make payment from their bank accounts by using electronic credit and debit transfers. ACH payments commonly uses for monthly- and subscription-based transactions like online loan repayment, bill payment system developed by software development company. It is used for B2B, B2C and P2P payments.  ACH payments do not provide real time authorization of funds like credit card.

• Merchant Account
  
  A merchant account is a bank account through that customer can receive payments through credit or debit cards. It comes under an agreement between an acceptor and a merchant’s bank for settlement of credit / debit card transactions. In many process it act as merchant account as well as payment gateway.

• Payment Gateway
  
  A payment gateway provides secure way to pass credit/ debit card details to perform transaction between merchants and customer and also between merchant and the payment processor. It comes in middle level between merchant and bank.
• Payment Processor
  
  It is a company which allows merchant to perform credit/debit card transactions. It provides protection from fraud to the customer and merchant.
• PCI compliance
  When payment gateway or merchant starts their working environment, at that time they meet the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). PCI DSS is a information security standard for organizations that handle branded credit cards from the major card schemes including American Express, Discover, Visa, and MasterCard.