Acquirer
The bank holding the merchant account that accepts card payments — the regulated entity carrying the operator's card-scheme relationship.
Acquiring banks sponsor merchants into Visa/Mastercard rails, settle card funds, and carry the scheme-rules liability for what the merchant does.
Why acquiring shapes strategy
Gambling acquiring is a specialist, capacity-constrained business: schemes impose registration programs and country-permission rules, and acquirers ration exposure per vertical. Licensed-market status directly widens acquiring options (and drops pricing) — one of regulation’s least-advertised commercial benefits. Losing an acquirer mid-quarter is the payments equivalent of a Google penalty: survivable only with redundancy already built.
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