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What is an acquiring bank and its functions?


Question

What is an acquiring bank and its functions?

Answer

An acquiring bank is a regulated financial entity with the ability to open and provide merchant accounts in order for the commerce to collect credit or debit cards payments. The acquiring bank is responsible for receiving the funds from the card issuing bank, and then paying them by wire transfer to commerce.

The role of the acquiring bank in payment processing is to receive a payment. If the merchant has only integrated a payment gateway, without connecting it to a merchant number, it cannot accept card payments. In order for the acquiring bank to credit sales made by card to a merchant, the payment gateway must receive an authorization number from the acquiring bank, once received, the bank will credit the money from the sale.

Many people confuse the term acquiring bank merchant account with a bank account. The main difference is that a bank account does not have the ability to accept cards. A merchant can never accept cards through their bank account and will necessarily depend on the acquiring bank.



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