Acquiring

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The Anglicism Acquiring ( German  "Akquisition" ) stands in the banking sector for the acquisition of contractors who are ready to accept payments by means of payment cards .

General

Acquiring is the activity of an acquirer. According to Art. 2 No. 1 Regulation (EU) 2015/751 of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 29, 2015 on interchange fees for card-based payment transactions, this is a payment service provider who has a contractual agreement with a payee (contracting company) on the acceptance and the Processing of card-based payment transactions closes, which causes the transfer of funds to the payee.

Acquiring as a merchant business is the conclusion of a contract between an acquirer and a contractual company ( service provider , merchant , seller , department store ) on the acceptance of payment cards; What is important here is the widest possible network of contractors. The aim of acquiring is to increase the acceptance of payment cards by increasing the number of accepting contractors. The more contract companies accept a payment card, the more the usability of a payment card by the cardholder improves.

Legal issues

The legal nature of the payment cards means that the following contracting parties are involved, namely

  • the Issuing - financial institution that issues payment card together instead of the card company or with it ( English Issuer ),
  • the cardholder who pays for goods or services he has bought with the card issued,
  • the merchant that accepts payments for its goods and services with payment cards and
  • the acquiring credit institute ( English acquirer ), which settles the card sales of the merchant with the cardholder .

All contracting parties are legally and / or economically related to one another; they form the infrastructure for card payment.

The card issuer is the issuer between the cardholder and the card company, and the acquirer is the card issuer between the contracting company and the card company . The large card companies are mostly only licensors , while the issuers conclude contracts with cardholders for the issue of payment cards. The acquirer settles the merchant's claim minus a discount to be paid by the merchant ("dealer fee"), which has been introduced by Regulation (EU) 2015/751 of the European Parliament and the Council of April 29, 2015 on interchange fees for card-based payment transactions since 2015 Debit cards are limited to 0.2% and credit cards to 0.3% of sales revenue .

The acquisition transaction is deemed under § 1 para. 1 sentence 2 ZAG as a payment service so that the acquirer in accordance with § 10 para. 1 ZAG a permission by the BaFin requires. The acquisition business is defined in more detail in Section 1 (35) of the ZAG. According to this, the acquisition business is a payment service that effects the transfer of funds to the payee and in which the payment service provider concludes a contractual agreement with the payee about the acceptance and processing of payment transactions. The acquirer is continuously supervised by BaFin even after authorization has been granted.

completion

Contracting companies are legally natural or legal persons who are to receive the amount of money transferred in a payment transaction as the payee. In addition to cash , they also accept payment cards as a means of payment. For this purpose, the issuer (card company and / or credit institution) issuing the payment card must conclude a contract with the contracting company that regulates the acceptance of the payment cards.

This includes, among other things, that the card company's obligation to pay is formally triggered if the service receipts duly completed by the merchant are provided with the addition “The cardholder's signature is on the service receipt” ( English signature on file ). According to the prevailing opinion , this obligation to pay is an abstract promise of debt according to § 780 BGB . The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) also assumes that the cardholder signs the service receipt as an abstract promise of debt. Unlike the guarantor, the card company should not only have subsidiary liability, but should enter into its own direct payment obligation. In addition, the card company only offers payment services in accordance with Section 1 Paragraph 1 Sentence 2 No. 5 ZAG . The credit card payment is made on account of performance ( Section 364 (2) BGB).

The card company's obligation to pay only arises if the merchant uses the POS terminal to create proper service receipts. The specification “signature on file” is always a necessary prerequisite for the credit card company's payment obligation in the face-to-face procedure ; The payment obligation arises in the mail order procedure even without the note “signature on file” on the service receipts , if orders are sent by e-mail / internet and the contractor does not have the cardholder's signatures. The acceptance of payment cards by contracting companies must be visibly indicated by the issuer's logo .

economic aspects

The acquirer (or issuer) must install the technical precautions ( hardware and software , network technologies ) and create the commercial prerequisites (including merchant fees, authorization ) in order to increase the acceptance of payment cards by contractual companies . New technologies such as the move away from the card sledge to terminal-based solutions contribute to cost reductions and economies of scale . The core processes of acquiring are network processing (at point of sale or ATMs ), transaction processing and the provision of the interface to the network service provider . The network effect due to the increase in acceptance points is improved by the acquirer, which means that payment cards can be used more frequently and the effect of economies of scale can occur.

The following companies, among others, act as acquirers in German-speaking countries (selection):

For credit card transactions , the Acquirer Reference Number (ARN) is a unique number that is assigned to a transaction if it extends from the merchant bank (acquiring bank) to the card system at the cardholder's bank (issuer). The ARN can be used to track a payment or refund. The buyer can contact their bank, which in turn can use the ARN to track a refund, for example.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Heinrich von Stein / Jürgen Terrahe, Handbuch Bankorganisation , 1995, p. 446
  2. ↑ Astrid Auer-Reinsdorff / Isabell Conrad (eds.) / Carsten Kociok, Handbook IT and Data Protection Law , 2016, § 27 Rn. 41
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Grill (Ed.), Gabler Bank Lexikon , Volume 1, 1995, p. 984 f.
  4. ↑ Julia Haas, Promise and Acknowledgment of Debt , 2011, p. 173
  5. ^ BGH, judgment of April 16, 2002, Az .: XI ZR 420/01 = BGHZ 152, 75
  6. ↑ BGH WM 2004, 1130 , 1132
  7. ^ BGH, judgment of July 12, 2005, Az .: XI ZR 412/04 = BGHZ 157, 256
  8. ↑ Stefan Huch, The Transformation of the European Card Business , 2013, p. 108
  9. ^ Johann Heinrich von Stein / Jürgen Terrahe , Handbuch Bankorganisation , 1995, p. 446
  10. ↑ Stefan Huch, The Transformation of the European Card Business , 2013, p. 109