Terminology in Payment Industry

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Acquirer:

An acquiring bank (or acquirer) is the bank or financial institution that processes credit and or debit card payments for products or services for a merchant. The term acquirer indicates that the bank accepts or acquires credit card transactions from the card-issuing banks within an association. The best known (credit) card Associations are Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club, JCB and China UnionPay.

Merchant Accounts:
The acquiring bank contract with the merchant is a merchant account. The arrangement is actually a line of credit and not a bank account. Under the agreement, the acquiring bank exchanges funds with issuing banks on behalf of the merchant, and pays the merchant for the net balance of their daily payment card activity: gross sales, minus reversals, interchange fees, and acquirer fees.
Interchange fees are fixed rates set by the card association, varying by the merchant's industry, as reflected in their SIC codes. Acquirer fees are an additional markup added to association Interchange fees by the acquiring bank, varying at the acquirer's discretion.

ACH payments:
ACH payments are financial transactions handled through what is called the Automated Clearing House (ACH). ACH is an electronic network which processes very large volumes of transactions in the United States. The network through which ACH payments are made is highly reliable and efficient, and is used for a variety of purposes. Trillions of dollars worth of ACH payments are processed every year in the U.S.

Routing number:
A routing transit number (RTN) is a nine digit bank code, used in the United States, which appears on the bottom of negotiable instruments such as checks identifying the financial institution on which it was drawn. This code was designed to facilitate the sorting, bundling, and shipment of paper checks back to the drawer's (check writer's) account.

Payment System
Payment systems may be physical or electronic and each has their own procedures and protocols. Standardisation have allowed some of these systems and networks to grow to a global scale, but there are still many country and product specific systems. Examples of payment systems that have become globally available are credit card and automated teller machine networks. Specific forms of payment systems are also used to settle financial transactions for products in the equity markets, bond markets, currency markets, futures markets, derivatives markets, options markets and for transfer funds between financial institutions both domestically using clearing and Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) systems and internationally using the SWIFT network. Due to the backing of modern fiat currencies with government bonds, payment systems are a core part of modern monetary systems.

Bank Sort Code
A sort code is the name given by both the British and Irish banking industry to the bank codes which are used to route money transfers between banks within their respective countries via their respective clearance organizations.
The sort code, which is a six-digit number, is usually formatted as three pairs of numbers, for example 12-34-56. It identifies both the bank and the branch where the account is held.
The British and Irish sort codes are only used for domestic money transfers. If money is being transferred across international borders, an international network is used. Many European countries use the IBAN as a means of identifying bank account numbers