Talk:Acquiring bank

What is difference between acquiring bank and issuing bank ?
An Acquiring bank provides Electronic Funds Transfer EFT Facilities to merchants. These merchants are provided with terminals that send transaction details to a processing center that verifies the available funds or credit from the associated credit card.

The issuing bank creates personal accounts for each credit card holder. The details of this account is personalized on the issued credit card. Hence a bank can be both the issuing bank and the acquiring bank as the card for the customer and the terminal for the merchant is provided by the same bank. Generally the transaction will be routed to an interchange when the issuing and acquiring bank are different. --59.150.105.167 (talk) 01:52, 24 March 2010 (UTC) —Precedi$$$$ng unsigned comment added by 209.94.215.231 (talk) 19:04, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Consistency with Issuer/Issuing Bank
I think the term Acquirer is industry short-hand for Acquiring Bank, so we don't need pages on both terms. Simply use Acquiring Bank and state somewhere in the article that this is often referred to in the industry as Acquirer. Similarly the term Issuer is industry short-hand for Issuing Bank; in fact, we don't have a page for Issuer, but we should state somewhere on the Issuing Bank article that this is often referred to in the industry as Issuer. Also, we should have redirects from Acquirer to Acquiring Bank and from Issuer to Issuing Bank. --Bill.albing (talk) 18:59, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Both refer to the same thing
I work in the industry for an acquirer. "Acquirer" and "acquiring bank" refer to the same thing. However, "acquirer" is used almost exclusively. —Preceding unsigned comment added by WAJWAJ (talk • contribs) 03:16, 27 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes I second the above statement by WAJWAJ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kddoshi (talk • contribs) 06:56, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Is a payment gateway service also an Aquirer or Aquiring Bank?
I have noticed in my research that some Payment Processing Service Providers seem to be directly able to access 'Credit Card Interchange' and others that use either their own or your preferred 'Acquiring Bank' to complete transactions. I have also noticed that even banks(e.g. HSBC) that provide merchant services, provided it using a different business group (e.g. HSBC Merchant Services) that acts just like a Payment Gateway. In fact, 'HSBC Merchant Services' is actually a rebadged Global Payments Inc. (http://www.globalpaymentsinc.com/UK/index.html) service in the UK. The question is...is a Payment Processing Service and Acquirer that needs to use an Acquiring Bank? Occasionally these two entities may be the same organisation. If so, then I would suggest that either: a) there is a difference between ‘Acquirer’ and 'Acquirer Bank' Or b) ‘Acquirer’ and 'Acquirer Bank' refer to one or many intermediary organisations between a Merchant and the Card Association networks. --Nrogoff (talk) 15:22, 3 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Gateway service as the name suggests channels the electronic information. Company X may provide both Gateway and Acquiring Services to a shop (merchant). In a different scenario Company Y may provide the Gateway Services with Company X providing the Acquiring Services.


 * Acquiring for Card Transactions: This requires an Acquirer (although most are banks but not necesarily. An payment instituion can be an acquirer) to become a member of the Card Scheme (Visa, Mastercard the most well known four party card schemes). If you are a company which provides Gateway Service only you will need an acquirer to complete the circle to complete the payment process and fund flows.