Acquirer (acquiring bank)

What an acquirer does

An acquirer is the merchant's bank in the card system. When a customer pays, the acquirer routes the authorisation request into the card scheme, receives the issuing bank's approval or decline, and later collects the cleared funds and settles them to the merchant. Because settled card payments can still be reversed by chargebacks months later, the acquirer also underwrites the merchant: onboarding checks, ongoing risk monitoring and ultimate liability for merchant default all sit on its books.

Acquiring in South Africa

South African acquiring is done by registered banks operating under the oversight of the South African Reserve Bank and the card schemes' rules. A merchant signs a merchant agreement with an acquirer, receives a merchant ID (MID), and pays a merchant discount rate on each transaction - the acquirer's route for recovering interchange, scheme fees and its own margin. The acquirer is also the merchant's channel for disputes: chargebacks arrive through it, and representment evidence goes back through it.

How merchants connect to an acquirer

Few businesses integrate with an acquiring bank directly. Most reach one through a payment gateway or payment facilitator that already maintains certified connections and handles the technical heavy lifting - 3-D Secure, tokenisation, settlement files. LekkaPay connects merchants to Absa, Nedbank, any MPGS-compatible acquirer and any Cybersource-connected bank, either through a merchant account in the merchant's own name or under its facilitation model.