Loans, credit, insurance & investment

These are the banks that process the payments made to a merchant. They ensure that the funds are remitted to the merchant’s bank account on the agreed date. In the early years when payment was made using paper slips the processing was highly manual but it is now highly automated.
For this service the bank changes the merchant a fixed transaction fee. This fee is negotiated between the merchant and the bank. For small retailers it is often in the region of 3%–4% of the transaction value. For large retailers, such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour, with huge bargaining power, pricing is both much lower and negotiated.
The fee charged to the merchant is split three ways between the merchant processing bank, the network provider and the issuing bank.

The term “merchant” is used for all of the organizations that accept payment by credit card. These include retail outlets, hotels, airlines, travel agents, and restaurants. The list goes on. Today most enterprises that sell products or services to retail customers accept credit cards. The explosive growth of the number of companies operating through the Internet has made the ability to pay by credit card even more important.
In countries such as China, where the banking, clearing and payment systems are relatively undeveloped, many companies use credit cards to pay suppliers.