The terms debits and credits refer to push and pull actions on a particular account. Here's how they would work when you look at Payment Orders versus your Bank Statement Transactions.
Debits and Credits for Payment Orders
When you create a payment order, debits and credits relate to the external account being interacted with, or the counterparty’s account.
So, for example, if you create a credit payment order, that means you are pushing funds to the counterparty's account. For a visual example, here is a credit payment order where we are pushing out funds to the counterparty.
Debits and Credits for Bank Statement Transactions
On the flip side, when we credit a Payment Order, we see the direction for the transaction as a debit to our own internal account. Here is a visual example of how the transaction looks that reconciles to the payment order above:
When you view transactions on your internal accounts, debits and credits refer to the activity as it relates to the internal accounts (or bank accounts owned by your company). So, for example, a debit transaction means that there was a pull of funds from your bank account.
To tie the activity between both hypothetical accounts together, when you ACH credit a customer’s account, you ACH debit your own internal account. When you ACH debit a customer's account, you ACH credit your own internal account.