Acquiring Bank
The bank that holds a merchant account and settles card transactions into the merchant’s business bank account.
An acquiring bank, or acquirer, is the financial institution that holds your merchant account and actually accepts card payments on your behalf. It is the party carrying the risk, and therefore the party whose decision genuinely matters.
This distinction is often blurred. The processor or ISO you deal with day to day may not be the acquirer; they sell and service accounts that a sponsor bank underwrites. When an account is approved, held in reserve or closed, it is usually the acquirer's decision being relayed rather than your provider's own.
The acquirer also assigns your merchant category code and carries the exposure for coding a business incorrectly, which is why underwriting cares so precisely about what you sell. A provider offering to code you more favourably is transferring a risk onto you that lands when the correction comes.
Acquirers periodically revise which categories they will accept, and those revisions can close accounts that have never had a problem. That is the specific risk redundancy across more than one acquirer exists to solve.