Acquirer

Also called acquiring bank, merchant acquirer

The bank or licensed institution that holds the merchant's card-acceptance agreement, receives card payments through the networks and settles the money to the merchant.

Every card payment has two banks behind it. The issuer sits with the player and the acquirer sits with the seller. On each payment the acquirer pays the issuer interchange, which the European Commission describes as the fee “the bank of the retailer (the ‘acquiring bank’) pays” to “the cardholder’s bank”. The acquirer passes that cost on to the merchant.

Most studios reach an acquirer through a PSP, and its rules still apply. Visa grades acquirers on their whole portfolio. An acquirer is “Above Standard” at a 0.5% VAMP ratio and “Excessive” at 0.7% (Visa). Visa’s rules also make an acquirer liable for the acts of the payment facilitators and sponsored merchants it signs. Acquirers therefore watch each merchant’s dispute ratio, and Stripe tells its users that Visa “assesses fees to merchants that exceed the Excessive threshold” (Stripe).

Under a merchant of record, the MoR is the merchant on the acquirer’s books, so disputes from your players count against the MoR’s account. More on processing costs in hidden fees.