In simple words, by services we mean the ability to accept credit cards as a mode of payment. Well, we can also term the use of credit cards as a service. However, generally, services will include the services that enable acceptance of by a merchant. So, for a shopkeeper, use of processing machines to accept payments, is a service that he is providing to his customers (and he himself is receiving this service from the provider of processing machine and others involved in making this process so smooth). Since carrying cash is no more a common practice, any shop that doesn’t use/provide such services would end up losing a lot of customers because customers can’t pay with anything other than a credit card. So, for most merchants, providing services (or processing services) to their customers, has become very essential part of business.

With the internet boom, came a lot of online businesses. These businesses were in the form of virtual shops (or e-shops) that existed either only on the internet or were a virtual extension of physical shops. All these businesses (some selling goods, some selling services), needed a way to accept payments from their customers. This gave birth to online services. The simplest use of these online services is in the form of a simple webpage/web-form that asks you to provide your details. These details are then verified and processed to debit the amount from your and credit it to the merchant’s accounts. Since details are sensitive information, these websites started implementing mechanisms/technology to secure it and prevent it from getting in the hands of fraudsters. Such sites are now called secured websites and form the backbone of e-commerce.

Besides these basic ways of implementing services, the services are provided in some other forms too e.g. over-the-phone payments using credit cards, use of third party online service providers who provide you with an interface to accept payments.

So, there are a lot of different ways in which services are implemented and as the time goes by, the expanse of these services is sure to increase.