MasterCard Acquirer

We just acquired three bean bag chairs with our corporate MasterCard for the Shmoop “hang cave.” Does that make us MasterCard acquirers?

Actually, no...the term applies to financial companies approved to process MasterCard transactions.

The acquirer is the first step in the approval process (after the merchant, of course). You swipe your card. The machine calls up the acquirer, who sends the request to the processor, who approves or denies the charge.