epay Acquiring Pricing Models

The acquirer is a bank or a company that holds an acquiring license from the credit card organization. Acquirer holds a service agreement with the merchant, processes the card transactions on merchant’s behalf and provides a payment guarantee.

Acquirer provides the following services to merchants:

• Processing of card payments
• Providing payment guarantee & the money transfer to the merchant’s bank account
• The reporting (billing or statistics)

Acquirer enables transactions to be authorized and carries out both clearing (the processing) and settlement (the payment of the transaction amounts, minus any chargebacks and fees) for the merchant.

Example of the authorization process:

• A brick-and-mortar merchant accepts the card payment via POS terminal at the point of sale.
• The terminal sends the transaction data to the Acquirer, who forwards the transaction via the Card Schemes to the Issuer Bank for approval.
• The Issuer approves or declines the transaction and sends the authorization response to Acquirer, who forwards it to the merchant. Cardholder interaction may be required for the authorization process, for example, entering the PIN.

As a merchant, you pay fees according to the chosen pricing model to the acquirer. These fees are interchange fee, card scheme fees and acquiring fee. The acquirer pays the card scheme fees and interchange fee to the card schemes. The issuer receives the interchange fee from the card schemes.

Interchange ist eine geringe Gebühr, die in der Regel von Acquirern an die Kartensausgeber (die Bank des Karteninhabers) gezahlt wird. Die EU-Verordnung über Interbankenentgelte für den kartenbasierten Zahlungsverkehr begrenzt die Interbankenentgelte für Verbraucherkarten (0,2% des Transaktionsbetrags bei Debitkarten und 0,3% bei Kreditkarten). Weitere Informationen zu den Interchange Gebühren finden Sie auf den offiziellen Seiten von MasterCard und Visa.

The Card Scheme fees depend on many factors and consist of different individual components for each card used. The fees charged by the credit card organization for each transaction result from a complex calculation with a number of variables. Therefore, the fee to be paid by the merchant varies from transaction to transaction for each card used.

Die Acquiring Gebühr ist die Gebühr, die der Acquirer für die Erbringung seiner Dienstleistung vom Händler einbehält. Sie ist i.d.R. eine feste Gebühr ein Bestandteil (das zweite Plus) des Interchange++ Pricings (epay flex).

“Disagio“ is a rate charged to a merchant for the payment processing of card transactions, given as a percentage of each sales transaction processed. The Disagio denotes the amount of the merchant fee per transaction. It can consist of one component (epay Fix) or three individual components (epay Flex).

Purchase with cashback allows a cardholder to conduct a transaction at a point-of-sale (POS) in a card present environment and request an additional cash withdrawal, as a part of the same transaction. Besides girocard, both Visa and Mastercard cashback allows you as a merchant to dispense cash to your customers at the point-of-sale, when they pay with their cards.

Important points regarding cashback:

• Cash withdrawals are only permitted in connection with a card transaction to pay for the merchant’s goods and services.
• Cash withdrawals with cashback must not exceed €200 for EC and credit cards.
• There is currently no cash withdrawal with cashback minimum, neither for EC nor for credit cards.
• Cash is paid out exclusively based on a mandatory authorization of the requested amount by the card issuer (EC card).

Clearing is the transmission of the processed transaction via the respective interface to the card scheme.
Settlement is the evaluated payment of the card scheme to the acquirer as a whole. Settlement thus describes the actual flow of money.
From this the payment is provided to the merchant by the acquirer – at the time according to contractual agreement (daily/weekly/monthly).

Credit card payments in case the authorization has been successful. This means that the merchant is guaranteed to receive his money in any case and can hand over the goods or services to the cardholder. In this way, the acquirer assumes liability and guarantees the merchant that payment for the goods and services delivered will be made.

A consumer card is a payment card offered to individual cardholders that intend to use it for personal purposes. A commercial or a non-consumer card is a payment card offered to registered businesses for their employees to use to make purchases on behalf of their company.

Interchange fee and Card Scheme fees vary based on the region: domestic, intra-EEA, intra non-EEA and inter-regional, defined by the locations of the card-issuing bank and the point of sale. A card-based domestic transaction is a transaction in which the card-issuing bank is located in the same country as the point of sale. An intra EEA card-based transaction is a transaction in which the card-issuing bank is located in a different country within the European Economic Area (EEA) than the point of sale at which the card is used. An intra non-EEA card-based transaction is a transaction in which the card-issuing bank is located outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) but in Europe and the point of sale at which the card is used is within Europe Economic dream (EEA) or vice versa. An interregional card-based transaction is a transaction in which the card-issuing bank is located outside of Europe and the point of sale is within Europe or vice versa.