Card acquiring isn’t one-size-fits-all proposition. Some businesses already hold adequate licensing, compliance frameworks and risk teams capable of handling the necessary tasks – they just need an acquirer behind them. Others have the customers and the appetite to launch, but no interest in spending years building underwriting, onboarding and due diligence from scratch.
That’s the gap our PayFac Partnership model is built to fix.
So, if you are…
…a regulated financial institution looking to offer card acquiring under your own brand;
…a fintech launching merchant acceptance and looking for a quicker route to market;
…a PSP wanting to expand into acquiring without rebuilding or expanding your operations;
…or a newly established business with commercial ambition but limited capacity for full in-house compliance and risk;
…then PAYSTRAX PayFac Partnership is for you!
What is a PayFac partnership?
In a traditional setup, your merchants sign with a payment gateway with an acquirer behind it. That’s two contracts, two integrations, and two relationships to manage. A Payment Facilitator (PayFac) partnership collapses that into one and lets you offer cards acquiring to your own merchants under your own brand, with an acquirer powering everything behind the scenes. You sit between the acquirer and your sub-merchants with full ownership over the onboarding process and merchant relationship.
With PayFac partnership you don’t have to build the full acquiring stack from scratch. Visa and Mastercard principal membership, technical platform, settlement rails and regulatory backbone all sit with PAYSTRAX. How much of the operational work you take on yourself is up to you.
Two models, one foundation
PAYSTRAX currently offers two PayFac models which both support merchant-level MIDs, are fully scheme-compliant and have the flexibility to shift between them as your team and ambitions grow. The difference just comes down to who handles what.
➡️ PayFac Partnership: best for organisations with strong in-house compliance teams. It’s designed for licensed financial institutions with their own onboarding, KYC/AML and risk capability. You collect the documents, run due diligence, make the approval decisions and submit the merchant to PAYSTRAX. We issue the MID, while you keep maximum control.
➡️ Acquiring as a Service (AqaaS): best for partners scaling fast with limited internal resources. It’s the same partnership, but with the compliance heavy lifting from our side. You bring the merchants while PAYSTRAX handles onboarding, KYC/KYB, underwriting and risk assessment. The MID is issued once we’ve approved. The merchant agreement, client relationship and settlements remain on your side – you just skip the operational overhead.
6 core benefits of PayFac Partnership
A ready-made acquiring platform, so you can start processing without the cost or delay of building your own.
Fully compliant, PCI DSS-certified infrastructure, backed by Principal Membership with Visa and Mastercard across the EU, EEA, the UK and beyond.
Your choice of involvement. Lead on everything, share the work with us, or hand the operational side over entirely – whatever fits your needs best.
IC++ pricing and revenue-share models that let you set merchant pricing per vertical or risk profile to keep your margin transparent.
A dedicated partner account manager for onboarding, integration and day-to-day operational support.
Scale-ready integrations – Server-to-Server API, Copy & Pay, Mobile SDK, Apple Pay and Google Pay acceptance, tokenisation, 3DS 2.0, real-time payouts via Visa Direct and Mastercard MoneySend, plus full reporting through the partner portal.
Who qualifies for PayFac partnership?
Because PAYSTRAX operates under EU/EEA and UK financial regulation, anyone onboarded under the PayFac model needs to be a licensed financial institution in their own right. Typically, an authorised Electronic Money Institution (EMI) or Payment Institution (PI) with the permissions to process payments, safeguard client funds and settle to merchants.
Built around how you actually work
Businesses want an acquirer ready to meet them where they are with the licences and infrastructure in place, but the operational model shaped around their team, compliance posture and commercial plans. That’s exactly why PAYSTRAX keeps it simple and flexible to mould into the niche requirements of our PayFac customers.
Not PCI compliant yet? Not a blocker. If your gateway isn’t PCI DSS certified, our Copy & Pay integration handles it for you. Cardholder details are collected on a hosted payment page within the PAYSTRAX PCI DSS environment, so card data never touches your systems.
Ready to explore a PayFac partnership?
If you’re looking to launch or expand card acquiring under your own brand, contact PAYSTRAX today to talk through which PayFac model fits your business better.
