A merchant financial institution, also known as an acquirer, offers accounts to businesses that accept payment cards. Before you can accept payments, you must have a merchant account from an acquirer. Your merchant account must be configured to process card-not-present, card-present, or mail-order/telephone-order (MOTO) transactions.
Each acquirer has connections to a limited number of payment processors. You must choose a payment processor that your acquirer supports.
You can expect your acquirer to charge these fees:
  • Discount rates—your acquirer charges a fee and collects a percentage of every transaction. The combination of the fee and the percentage is called the
    discount rate
    . These charges can be bundled (combined into a single charge) or unbundled (charged separately), depending on your acquirer and other factors.
  • Interchange fees—payment networks, such as Visa or Mastercard, each have a base fee, called the
    interchange fee
     for each type of transaction. Your acquirer and processor can show you ways to reduce this fee.
  • Chargebacks—when cardholders dispute charges, you can incur
    chargebacks
    . A chargeback occurs when a charge on a customer’s account is reversed. Your acquirer removes the money from your account and could charge you a fee for processing the chargeback.
To help prevent chargebacks, you should:
  • Use accurate merchant descriptors, so customers can recognize the transactions on their statements
  • Provide good customer support
  • Ensure rapid problem resolution
  • Maintain a high level of customer satisfaction
  • Minimize fraudulent transactions
If excessive chargebacks or fraudulant changes occur:
  • You might need to change your business processes to reduce the number chargebacks and/or fraud.
  • Your acquiring institution might increase your discount rate
  • Your acquiring institution might revoke your merchant account.
Contact your sales representative for information about products that can help prevent fraud.