Terms,Organizations

• The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is a payment-integration initiative of the European Union for simplification of bank transfers denominated in euro. As of February 2014, SEPA consists of the 28 EU member states, the four members of the EFTA (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), Monaco and San Marino. 
•  The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is a free trade organisation between four European countries that operates in parallel with – and is linked to – the European Union (EU). The EFTA was established on 3 May 1960 as a trade bloc-alternative for European states who were either unable or unwilling to join the then-European Economic Community (EEC) which has now become the EU  

direct debit

A direct debit or direct withdrawal is a financial transaction in which one person withdraws funds from another person's bank account. Formally, the person who directly draws the funds ("the payee") instructs his or her bank to collect (i.e., debit) an amount directly from another's ("the payer's") bank account designated by the payer and pay those funds into a bank account designated by the payee.

Before the payer's banker will allow the transaction to take place, the payer must have advised the bank that he or she has authorized the payee to directly draw the funds. It is also called pre-authorized debit (PAD) or pre-authorized payment (PAP)

In countries where setting up authorization is easy enough, direct debits can also be used for irregular payments, such as for mail order transactions or at a point of sale.

payee

payee

the person or organization to whom money, especially a cheque, must be paid

payment service provider (PSP)

A payment service provider (PSP) offers (web) shops online services for accepting electronic payments by a variety of payment methods including credit card, bank-based payments such as direct debit, bank transfer, and real-time bank transfer based on online banking.

Typically, they use a software as a service model and form a single payment gateway for their clients (merchants) to multiple payment methods