Merchant Acquiring

Merchant acquiring is the service that lets a business accept card, wallet and account-to-account payments. The acquirer provides the merchant account, authorises each transaction with the payment schemes, manages settlement, and pays the funds into the merchant's bank account.

Payment processing initiates a transaction and runs the required security checks. Acquiring is broader: it provides the merchant account, authorises the payment, connects to the schemes, and settles funds into the merchant's bank. An acquirer usually includes processing; a processor does not necessarily provide acquiring. Worldline does both.

The four-corner model describes the four roles in a card payment: the cardholder, the merchant, the acquirer (the merchant's payment partner) and the issuer (the cardholder's bank). Schemes such as Visa and Mastercard sit in the middle, connecting acquirer and issuer, authorising transactions and routing settlement back to the merchant.

Typically: interchange and scheme fees set by the card networks, the acquirer's merchant service charge, and possibly gateway fees, monthly minimums and PCI costs. These can be combined into one rate (blended pricing) or shown separately (Interchange++).

Interchange++ breaks the cost into three transparent components: the card-network interchange, the scheme fee, and the acquirer's merchant service charge. It is designed so merchants can see exactly what they pay on every transaction — and where the cost can be reduced.

Yes. Worldline Acquiring supports 3D Secure and Strong Customer Authentication to reduce fraud and meet PSD2 requirements — including SCA exemptions such as low-value payments, merchant-initiated transactions and Transaction Risk Analysis, applied automatically where they raise approval rates.

Online (e-commerce), in-person (POS terminals), mobile, marketplaces and platforms, and omnichannel set-ups under a single relationship. Recurring and subscription billing is supported with network tokenisation, so card data stays secure and stored credentials stay up to date.

If a cardholder disputes a charge, the merchant receives a chargeback notice and can respond with evidence; outcomes range from a refund to a fee reversal. Refunds are processed back to the customer's card and may affect settlement amounts depending on timing. Worldline provides dispute data through the Single Acquiring API.

Worldline is a licensed acquirer across the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, operating through payment institution licences in Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. Coverage extends further through joint ventures, including Italy, Greece and Australia.

More than twenty, through a single hub. These include iDEAL, TWINT, BLIK, Swish, Bancontact, Payconiq, Bluecode, Wero, Klarna, Alipay+ and WeChat Pay — alongside Europe's domestic card schemes: Cartes Bancaires, girocard, Bancontact and Pago Bancomat. One integration, one contract, no re-signing when we add the next one.

Yes. Banks, PSPs and payment facilitators can run acquiring under their own brand on Worldline's platform, with local instances configured for their market. The same infrastructure that serves Worldline's own merchant business is available to licensed customers on a white-label basis.

Yes. Start by processing under Worldline's licence with sponsorship. When you obtain your own licence, switch to it on the same rails, without re-integrating or migrating merchants. You move up the stack; the infrastructure underneath does not change.

One developer-facing API that connects a partner to every Worldline acquiring platform, every alternative payment method and every value-added service. It abstracts the platforms behind it: you integrate once, and new markets, schemes and payment methods become available without new integration work.

Through intelligent routing, automatic application of PSD2 exemptions, network tokenisation, and on-us processing where Worldline is both issuer and acquirer. Our target is an authorisation approval rate consistently above the industry benchmark, measured per scheme and per market.