Accepting VISA card in your business Merchant Account

By accepting Visa cards, you join the largest consumer payment system in the world. Merchants, cardholders, and
financial institutions are all connected with Visa's advanced network, offering you the assurance of secure
transactions and timely payments.

But what exactly happens from the moment you accept a customer's Visa card to the time you receive payment? See
exactly how the Visa payment process works.

• Key players
• A two-part process
• Authorization
• Clearing and settlement

Key players
Every Visa card transaction involves multiple parties. The following definitions will give you a good understanding of
who’s who in the transaction process.
 

• Cardholder: an authorized Visa user.
• Issuer: a financial institution that issues Visa cards and maintains a contract with cardholders for repayment.
• Merchant: an authorized acceptor of Visa cards for the payment of goods and services.
• Acquirer: The acquirer (financial institution or merchant bank) that contracts with the merchant for Visa acceptance
  and enables Visa card payments from customers.
• Visa: the world's largest consumer payment system, whose members are the financial institutions that issue Visa
  cards and/or sign merchants to accept Visa.
• VisaNet: an advanced network that acts as an Authorization service for Visa card transactions, as well as a Clearing
  and Settlement service to transfer payment information between parties.

A two-part process
Processing a Visa card transaction involves two stages: Authorization, where an electronic request is sent through
various parties to either approve or decline the transaction; and Clearing and Settlement, where all parties settle
their accounts and get paid.

1. Visa cardholder presents card to pay for purchases
2. Merchant swipes Visa card, enters the dollar amount, and transmits an authorization request to the acquirer.
3. Acquirer electronically send the authorization request to VisaNet
4. VisaNet routes the request to the cardholder's issuer
5. Issuer approves or declines the transaction
6. VisaNet forwards the issuer's response to the acquirer
7. Acquirer forwards response to merchant
8. Merchant receives the authorization response and completes the transaction accordingly

Clearing and settlement

9. Merchant deposits the transaction receipt with the acquirer
10. Acquirer credits the merchant's account and electronically submits the transaction to VisaNet for settlement
11. VisaNet pays the acquirer and debits the issuer's account, then sends the transaction to the issuer
12. Issuer posts the transaction to the cardholder's account and sends the cardholder a monthly statement
13. Cardholder receives the statement and pays issuer

    To find the current Merchant Rates, compare our rate table. 

     

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