Definition
The technical and operational handling of customer payments — credit cards, ACH, online checkout — typically via a payment processor like Stripe, Square, or a card terminal provider.
Why it matters
How a business accepts money affects both how quickly it gets paid and how much of each sale it keeps. Processing fees are a real cost that adds up across every transaction, and offering the payment methods customers actually want to use removes friction that can cost a sale at checkout. The tradeoff most owners weigh is convenience and speed of funds against the per-transaction cut a processor takes.