Automated Clearing House
An electronic payment system which connects banks to one another by way of the Federal Reserve Board or other ACH operators. This enables debit card purchases, payroll deposits, and so forth.

Discount Rate
A percentage of each transaction that the merchant is charged by the Merchant Service Provider for facilitating a credit card transaction.

Merchant Account
This is an account set up with a bank to process credit card orders from customers.

Monthly Minimum Fee
A minimum amount the merchant must pay the Merchant Service Provider every month. It does not apply if the combination of Transaction Fees and Discount Fees exceeds the minimum amount.

Payment Gateway
An online system for real-time charging of credit cards when a customer places an order. Normally requires a merchant account.

Real-Time Processing
This method of credit card processing authorizes and charges the customer's credit card at the time of purchase.

Secure Server
A Secure Server uses an SSL certificate. It is generally a piece of web space that can only be dealt with by using SSL ensuring that data transferred between the web space and the browser is encrypted.

Setup Fee
An initial fee paid to the Merchant Service Provider for establishment of an account and for processing and reporting tools.

Shopping Cart
A piece of software installed on an online vendor's web space used to produce a shopping system. This generally means product pages, some sort of an online "basket" and a way for the customer to add, remove and modify product selections and to check out when they are done shopping.

SSL
Stands for Secure Socket Layer. It's a protocol for transferring data between a web site user and a web site. When a web site uses SSL (by using a Secure Server) data sent to and from the web space is encrypted to prevent it being read in transit over the Internet.

Statement Fee
This is a fee charged to the merchant by the bank or Merchant Service Provider for preparing and sending out monthly statements and reports.

Transaction Fee
A small charge paid to the processing network (e.g., Visa/MasterCard) for use of their system, for each transaction processed.