What is acquiring?

What is acquiring and why do you need it? Explaining the basics of payment processing

Simply said, an acquirer is the link between the bank and your customer’s credit card that controls and validates the credit card as well as possession of an amount of your revenue to secure chargeback before paying the amount into your bank account. When you want to accept payments in your e-commerce or subscription service, you need an acquiring agreement to be able to process payments.  You need the acquirer to handle the process from the payment gateway to the customer’s bank and then back to you.
To be able to make that transaction, there are some requirements in regards to how you get an agreement with an acquirer.

The payment process takes place in a few steps:

1. The customer initiates a card transaction, either in-store or online.
2. Your payment gateway sends the transaction details to the acquiring bank.
3. The acquiring bank sends a signal through the card network associated with the payment card, e.g., Mastercard or Visa.
4. The customers bank confirms the availability of funds in the customer’s account.
5. If the funds are insufficient, the transaction will be decline; and if there are enough funds, the transaction will be approved.
6. Once the transaction is complete, the acquiring bank deducts the funds from the customer’s account.
7. When the merchant completes the daily settlement, the acquiring bank ensures that the funds are transferred to the your account.

Good advice for preparing for an acquiring agreement

When you want to get an agreement with an acquirer, first you need to prepare some information to verify your ownership and identity along with your expectations for the performance of your webshop.

Some of the elements you need to prepare are:

• Your company information
• The company registration file
• Share of ownership
• Your business model
• Bank account
• Your registered websites

Along with the above required documents, it is also important that you have your detailed terms and conditions, your terms for subscription and images for the cards you are receiving. When you have that in place, you are ready to get the deal with the acquirer closed within just a few days.

Normally it only takes around 1-3 days to get approved, and then you can start to run your business!

Choosing an acquirer

When you’re using Billwerk+ as your payment gateway, you have a free choice of acquirer.
We are not dependent on a specific acquirer, so you have the freedom to choose to keep the one you have or to get assigned with a new one. This is not common in the payment industry, but we can only see benefits for our customers and for us in being acquirer independent.

Today, Billwerk+ is mainly collaborating with six major acquiring banks;

Rapyd (previously Valitor): An Icelandic financial services company providing payment processing and merchant services in Iceland, the UK, and other European countries.
Swedbank Pay: A major Swedish bank offering financial services, including merchant acquiring, mainly in Sweden and the Baltic countries.
Elavon: A global payment processor providing acquiring services to businesses across the US, Europe, and other regions.
Nets: A Northern European payment services company offering acquiring services and payment solutions to merchants in the Nordic region and other European countries.
Clearhaus: A Danish payment institution providing acquiring services to European merchants, with a focus on e-commerce and digital businesses.
Worldline (previously Bambora): A global payment services company offering acquiring services and payment solutions to merchants in multiple countries, including Europe and other regions.

In addition to these acquirers, we can also offer our customers acquiring services with CMCIC, SIX, Worldpay, AIB MS, Barclays, First Data EU, Colombia CredibanCo and Thailand Kasikorn Bank (Kbank).

Which acquirer you should get depends on specifics such as where you plan to do business and which payment methods you want to add. To make it easy for you to get the best deal for your needs, all you have to do is to fill in our acquiring application form, and we will match you with the acquirer that suits you best. The acquirer will then send you an email to finish your application process. It’s as easy as that!

You can easily add your existing agreement into our solution or fill in details to get a new agreement. If you need help with your acquiring agreement, old or new, contact us and we will help you!

Sign up today to get the Billwerk+ payment gateway and acquiring service.