Recently, an article by Sanjay Goel (of MustSeeIndia, an Indian travel site) on Pluggd.in about Payment Processors in India sparked my interest. The discussion highlighted 2 prominent points for me:

- lack of awareness about existing Indian + global payment options amongst Indian businesses (entrepreneurs, technologists, startups). Some users even suggested that PayPal is illegal in India.

- few merchants discussed real features (that they should demand more of) offered by their payment provider; most (and rightfully so in the Indian context) were concerned with pricing and ease of integration.

I thought it would be great to introduce the key players in the online payments ecosystem (also called e-payments or web payments) so everyone understands the differences between a payment gateway, a payment processor and a 3rd party payment platform……..