What is a payment network operator, what is an acquirer? Who earns what at the card terminal

The short answer

A payment network operator (Netzbetreiber) connects the card terminal at the till with the banks and card schemes: it supplies the terminal, forwards every payment for authorisation, settles with the merchant and is its point of contact when something goes wrong. The acquirer is something else, namely the licensed payment service provider that accepts, guarantees and credits credit card payments to the merchant.

Without a payment network operator, no terminal in Germany books anything. Without an acquirer, it accepts no Visa or Mastercard. Both can sit in one hand, but they do not have to.

The roles at a glance

Role	What it does	Does it touch the money?	Does it need a BaFin licence?
Technical payment network operator	Data centre, authorisation routing, end-of-day processing, keys	no	no, as long as it never takes possession of the funds (§ 2(1) no. 9 ZAG)
Commercial payment network operator	Sales, contract, terminal, billing, service	usually no	as above; different once turnover runs through its own accounts
Acquirer	Acceptance contract for credit cards, payment guarantee, crediting	yes	yes, acquiring business (§ 1(1) sentence 2 no. 5 ZAG)
Card-issuing bank (issuer)	Issues the card, debits the customer	yes	yes
Card scheme (girocard, Visa, Mastercard)	Rulebook, brand rights, scheme fees	no	no merchant-facing role

What is a commercial payment network operator?

The Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft (DK, the umbrella of the German banking associations) recognises exactly one role in its approval contract: “Netzbetreiber”. The contract is not transferable and obliges the operator, among other things, to install terminals, connect them to the operator's host, inject keys and keep a contingency plan with a recovery time of under two hours (version of 27.01.2025).

The market has nonetheless settled on a split, and the approval contract permits it, because the operator may engage third parties and win merchants through intermediaries. The commercial payment network operator sells or rents out the terminal, bills the transaction costs and owns the customer relationship; it buys the technical processing from the approved technical operator. For the merchant the difference is invisible day to day but decisive in the contract: the contact for price, term and service is the commercial payment network operator. If you want to know who sits behind it technically, ask; the service provider overview on girocard.eu lists the companies in the girocard system.

What is an acquirer?

The acquirer is the merchant's bank in the four-party model of Visa and Mastercard: customer, card-issuing bank, merchant, acquirer, with the card scheme in between. It signs the acceptance contract with the merchant, guarantees the payment and credits the money. For this it charges the merchant discount rate, which contains interchange, scheme fees and its own margin.

The Zahlungsdiensteaufsichtsgesetz (ZAG, German Payment Services Supervision Act) calls this “Akquisitionsgeschäft” (acquiring business) and describes it in § 1(35) ZAG as a service in which the payment service provider concludes an agreement with the payee on accepting and processing payments and brings about the transfer of the funds to the payee. This requires a licence. An acquirer is therefore always a payment institution, an e-money institution or a bank.

girocard has no acquirer. With a positive authorisation, the card-issuing bank itself declares that it will settle the claim; the merchant owes the fee to that same bank. Since the banking industry's commitment to the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office) in 2014, the rates have been negotiated bilaterally; the payment network operator collects them and passes them on. That is why it pays to check the contract to see whether girocard is billed on its own terms or blended into a flat rate with credit cards.

What is a payment service provider?

Here law and usage diverge. Legally, payment service providers under § 1(1) ZAG are above all payment institutions, e-money institutions and banks (CRR credit institutions), i.e. companies authorised to provide payment services such as acquiring. In market usage, almost anyone who processes payments calls itself that, often as “payment service provider” (PSP).

The line is drawn by § 2(1) no. 9 ZAG: technical service providers that contribute to the payment but “at no time come into possession of the funds to be transferred” are exempt, expressly including the provision and maintenance of terminals. A payment network operator whose merchants receive their credit directly from the acquirer or the bank therefore needs no licence. If turnover runs through its own accounts instead, acquiring business comes into play; BaFin describes this distinction in its ZAG guidance notice.

In practice, for the merchant: ask which account your credit comes from. If it comes from a pooled account of the provider, that provider must be a supervised institution, and you can check this in BaFin's company database.

Worked example: who gets what from a 30-euro ticket?

Figures from the PAYONE Classic tariff (credit card 1.49 %, girocard 0.26 %, each plus €0.08 per transaction, rental from €12.90 a month; as of 30.09.2026). Interchange on EEA consumer cards is capped by Articles 3 and 4 of EU Regulation 2015/751 at 0.2 % (debit) and 0.3 % (credit).

Ticket	Card	Merchant pays	of which at most interchange to the customer's bank	Remainder: scheme fees, acquirer, network operator
€30	Credit card (EEA, consumer)	€0.53	€0.09	€0.44
€80	Credit card (EEA, consumer)	€1.27	€0.24	€1.03
€30	girocard	€0.16	no acquirer; €0.08 shown as girocard fee	€0.08 per-transaction fee

The calculation shows where negotiation happens: interchange is capped and not negotiable for the merchant, while the larger share sits with the acquirer and the network operator. The price list does not say how much of the girocard fee shown is actually the bank's fee. More on the individual items in the guide Card payment fees.

The four contracts behind a card terminal

Anyone setting up a terminal usually signs several contracts, often bundled in one form: the payment network operator contract (technology, operation, service), the fee agreement for girocard, the acquiring contract for credit cards and the terminal rental or purchase. A provider can advertise a low percentage on acquiring and take its margin on rental and per-transaction fees.

Because these contracts can have different terms, every notice period has to be checked separately when switching. How to cancel a card terminal contract and calculate the renewal backwards is covered in the guide Cancelling a card terminal contract.

Austria has neither girocard nor the term Netzbetreiber; the Wirtschaftskammer (chamber of commerce) describes the market in terms of acquirers, issuers and card networks. Anyone working in both countries needs two contract models, see Card terminals in Austria.

What to clarify before you sign

1. Ask for every cost item: per-transaction fee, percentages per card type, rental, set-up, service flat fees.
2. Ask whether girocard is billed separately from credit cards.
3. Ask who the technical payment network operator is and who the acquirer is.
4. Ask which account your credit comes from, and check BaFin's database where pooled accounts are involved.
5. Get the term, the notice period for each contract and the replacement time for faulty devices in writing.