Payment & Banking Glossary

AEPS

Aadhaar Enabled Payment System — lets customers perform basic banking transactions such as cash withdrawal or balance enquiry at micro-ATMs or PoS devices using their Aadhaar number and biometric authentication instead of a card or PIN.

AMC

Annual Maintenance Contract — an ongoing agreement under which a vendor provides continued support, updates, and maintenance for a software platform after it goes live, typically for an annual fee.

AML

Anti-Money Laundering — laws, regulations, and internal procedures designed to detect and prevent the use of financial systems to disguise the origins of illegally obtained money.

BBPS

Bharat Bill Payment System — an RBI-conceived, NPCI-operated platform that provides a single, interoperable ecosystem for paying household and business bills online or through agents.

CBS

Core Banking System — the centralized software platform a bank runs to record customer accounts, balances, and transactions in real time, so customers can be served consistently from any branch or digital channel.

CKYC

Central KYC — a centralized registry where a customer's KYC records are stored once and can be reused across multiple banks and financial institutions, reducing repetitive paperwork.

Escrow

An arrangement where funds are held by a neutral third party, often via a designated bank account, until specified conditions are met — commonly used to hold customer funds briefly before releasing them to a merchant.

FASTag

An RFID-based tag affixed to a vehicle's windscreen that enables automatic deduction of toll charges as the vehicle passes through a toll plaza, without needing to stop.

GST

Goods and Services Tax — India's unified indirect tax on the supply of goods and services, relevant to payments because it applies to fees and charges levied on transactions.

ISO 20022

A newer, XML-based international standard for financial messaging that carries richer, more structured data than older formats, increasingly adopted for cross-border and domestic payment systems worldwide.

ISO 8583

An older international standard that defines the message format for financial transactions, especially card payments, and is still widely used by card networks, ATMs, and POS systems globally.

KYC

Know Your Customer — the process financial institutions and regulated businesses use to verify a customer's identity before or while providing services, intended to prevent fraud and financial crime.

NACH

National Automated Clearing House — an NPCI-operated platform for bulk, repetitive payments such as salary credits, dividend payments, and loan EMI collections, processed in batches rather than in real time.

NBFC

Non-Banking Financial Platform — a financial institution offering banking-like services such as loans and credit, but which does not hold a full banking license and cannot accept demand deposits the way a bank can.

NPCI

National Payments Corporation of India — the umbrella organization that operates several of India's retail payment systems and rails, including UPI, IMPS, NACH, FASTag, and RuPay.

PA (Payment Aggregator)

A regulated entity that onboards multiple merchants under its own arrangement with banks, collects payments on their behalf, and briefly holds those funds in a nodal or escrow account before settling them to each merchant.

PAN

Permanent Account Number — a unique alphanumeric identifier issued by the Indian Income Tax Department, commonly required as part of KYC and onboarding for financial and payment services.

PG (Payment Gateway)

The technology layer that authorizes, encrypts, and routes a payment transaction between a customer, a merchant, and the relevant bank or card network.

PSP

Payment Service Provider — a broad term for an entity that provides payment processing services to merchants, or, in the context of UPI, a regulated participant that offers UPI handles and payment services to end users.

RBI

Reserve Bank of India — India's central bank and primary regulator for banks, NBFCs, Payment Aggregators, and much of the broader payments ecosystem.

RuPay

A domestic card payment network developed by NPCI, positioned as an India-based alternative to international networks such as Visa and Mastercard.

SLA

Service Level Agreement — a formal agreement defining the expected performance, uptime, or response standards a service provider commits to for a client.

UPI

Unified Payments Interface — a real-time payment system operated by NPCI that lets users instantly transfer money between bank accounts using a mobile app and a virtual payment address, subject to periodic RBI/NPCI revisions to its operating rules.

Video KYC

A digital identity verification process that uses a live video call, combined with document and liveness checks, to complete KYC requirements remotely instead of requiring an in-person visit.

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