Acquirer
The licensed institution that holds a merchant’s account, accepts card and wallet payments on the merchant’s behalf, and settles the money to them. It is the party with the licence, the party the money passes through, and the party the merchant calls when a payment goes wrong. A merchant contracts with an acquirer; they do not contract with the card schemes or the wallets directly.
Why it matters to a merchant
The word matters at signing time, because the acquirer is the entity named in the merchant agreement and the one whose licence is doing the work. A merchant can be sold acceptance by a gateway, a reseller or a software vendor and still have an acquirer behind all three — so the useful question on a proposal is not "who am I buying from" but "who is the acquirer, and are they licensed here". Everything downstream — who holds the settlement, who answers a chargeback, who the regulator supervises — follows from that answer.
Read more: Acquirer, gateway, PSP: what the words actually mean
Where this comes up
Pages on this site that deal with this in context:
- Acquirer, gateway, PSP: what the words actually mean
- The best payment gateway in Singapore is the wrong question
- How to accept WeChat Pay and Alipay in Singapore
- Opening in Singapore: taking payment as a China-headquartered brand
- Who can enable Alipay+ and WeChat Pay for a Singapore merchant
- How to choose a payment acquirer in Singapore
Related terms
In this section: Who does what