Issuing hands out cards; acquiring lets a business accept them. This is the getting-paid side: onboarding and underwriting a merchant, moving the money in, and carrying the risk that a shop disappears before its refunds clear.
Step through onboarding, settlement, a chargeback, and the exact reason acquirers hold reserves.
The mirror image of issuing - who onboards the merchant, moves the money, and eats the risk.
"Issuing, in a mirror."
Acquiring is the merchant's side of the four-party model: the acquirer signs up sellers, connects them to the networks, moves the settlement money in, and carries the merchant risk. Everything issuing does for cardholders, acquiring does for shops.
"Underwrite the seller, not the buyer."
Before boarding a merchant: KYB, beneficial ownership, credit and fraud checks, and a read on the business model. High-risk verticals (travel, supplements, adult, crypto, anything with delivery lag) get reserves or declines - because the risk is the merchant failing to deliver.
"Who is legally the merchant?"
Three models. A Merchant of Record takes on the sale (and its tax and compliance) as principal. A PayFac aggregates many sub-merchants under its own master account. An ISO just refers merchants to an acquirer. The difference is who holds the licence, the funds and the liability.
"Three fees in a trench coat."
What a merchant 'pays to accept cards' is three stacked layers: interchange (to the issuer), scheme fees (to the network), and the acquirer's markup. Pricing can be transparent (interchange-plus) or opaque (blended or tiered) - the receipt below unstacks it.
"Money held against tomorrow's refunds."
A rolling reserve holds back a slice of each payout to cover future chargebacks. When a dispute lands, the acquirer claws it from the merchant's balance. Reserves are the acquirer's insurance against a merchant that takes money and can't - or won't - make good.
"One checkout, many sellers."
Ride-shares and marketplaces must pay many sub-merchants from one transaction. Split payments and payout APIs (the Stripe Connect model) handle the fan-out, the sub-merchant KYB, and the tax reporting - turning the platform itself into a mini-acquirer.
The same $100 sale, written the way the acquirer's statement records it.
The acquiring side up close - the three merchant models, the vanishing-merchant risk, pricing, marketplaces, and the 2025 interchange settlement.