Merchant acquirer.

In plain English

A merchant acquirer is the financial institution that contracts with a business to accept card payments, connects it to the card networks, and deposits the funds. The acquirer carries real risk, because if a merchant fails to deliver goods and customers charge back their purchases, the acquirer is on the hook when the merchant cannot pay. That risk is why acquirers underwrite merchants, hold reserves against some accounts, and can freeze or end processing. Its fee stacks on top of the interchange paid to the card-issuing bank and the network assessment.

01Why it matters

The acquirer's underwriting decides which businesses can accept cards at all, and its chargeback process is the machinery that resolves a disputed purchase between you and a seller.

02The math, step by step

Say a 100 dollar sale carries 1.80 dollars of interchange to the issuing bank, 13 cents in network assessments, and 30 cents to the acquirer. The merchant nets about 97.77 dollars. On 500,000 dollars of annual sales that total take is roughly 11,150 dollars.

Illustrative example. The amounts here are hypothetical, chosen to show how the math works, not real quoted rates or figures.

03What this is NOT

04Receipts

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