Merchant acquiring

Roles that need it

• Merchant Acquiring Sales Executive
• Payments Partnerships Manager (Acquiring & Gateways)
• Merchant Underwriting & Risk Analyst
• Chargeback & Disputes Analyst
• Payments Operations Analyst

Skills it belongs to

• Merchant acquiring and payment processing

Related concepts

• Four-party card schemeA four-party card scheme is a payment card scheme in which the cardholder's bank (issuer) and the merchant's bank (acquirer) are different firms, connected through the scheme's network and rules, so each transaction involves cardholder, issuer, acquirer and merchant. In a three-party scheme the scheme itself issues the cards and acquires the merchants.
• ChargebackA chargeback is the reversal of a card transaction started by the cardholder's bank (the issuer) under card scheme rules after the cardholder disputes it, for reasons such as fraud or goods not received. The merchant's bank (the acquirer) debits the merchant, who can contest it through representment and, if needed, scheme arbitration.
• Rolling reserveA rolling reserve is a share of a merchant's card sales, for example 10%, that the acquirer holds back for a set period, such as 90 or 180 days, before paying it out. It protects the acquirer against chargebacks, refunds and fines it may have to cover if the merchant cannot pay, and is common for new or high-risk merchants.
• Payment facilitator (PayFac)A payment facilitator is a firm that card schemes allow to sign up and serve many small merchants as sub-merchants under its own master merchant account with an acquirer. It onboards merchants quickly and pays them out, while it and the acquirer stay responsible for sub-merchant risk and compliance with scheme rules.
• Payment gatewayA payment gateway is the technical service that captures payment details at an online or in-store checkout, encrypts them and routes them to the acquirer or processor for authorisation, then returns the result to the merchant. Gateways often add tokenisation, fraud screening, 3-D Secure and support for local payment methods.

Sources

• Directive (EU) 2015/2366 on payment services in the internal market (PSD2), EUR-Lex (external site) accessed 31 Oct 2026
• Regulation (EU) 2015/751 on interchange fees for card-based payment transactions, EUR-Lex (external site) accessed 31 Oct 2026
• ECB glossary, entries A, European Central Bank (external site) accessed 31 Oct 2026

Updated 31 Oct 2026.