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Every card payment appears instant, but the money can travel through several companies and decades-old settlement systems before it actually reaches the merchant
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The terminal passes the transaction details to the merchant’s payment provider.
Its payments glossary also defines the acquirer as the entity to which the merchant transmits the information needed to process the card payment.
The card system reconciles the details, applies the relevant rules and fees, and calculates what each participating issuer and acquirer owes.
The ECB’s 2025 report on European card payments describes processors as companies positioned between the merchant’s acquirer and the card issuer, performing tasks involved in authorising and processing payments.
I previously wrote about the scale reached by India’s UPI payment system, which routes instant bank payments without reproducing the classic four-party card model.