What the bank checks first
What does a bank want before it lets a business take cards? A good deal of paper. The OCC, which oversees national banks, sets out in its Merchant Processing booklet the minimum a bank’s underwriting standards should require.
The list starts with a signed application and a signed processing agreement. Credit bureau reports on the owner follow, with financial statements, recent monthly statements from the current card processor and a site visit or other proof the business exists. The bank should also pick the right merchant category code and check two lists, OFAC’s register of Specially Designated Nationals and the card industry’s MATCH list of high-risk merchants.
This card-world version of KYB does not end at onboarding. The booklet expects banks to review existing merchants on a schedule and says a bank dealing with a financially unstable merchant may demand a holdback reserve or a security deposit.
Who carries the risk
A bank that contracts with merchants to settle their card sales is an acquiring bank, in the OCC’s words. The business may keep its settlement account at that bank or be paid by ACH into an account elsewhere.
The bank’s exposure is the reason for the scrutiny. If a merchant cannot honor its chargebacks, the booklet says, the acquiring bank must pay the card-issuing bank. Mail-order and telemarketing sellers, and businesses that take money now for delivery later, such as airline tickets or gym memberships, show more chargebacks, and many banks keep reserve accounts for higher-risk merchants.
In the EU, acquiring counts as a payment service in its own right. Article 4(44) of PSD2 defines it as a provider “contracting with a payee to accept and process payment transactions, which results in a transfer of funds to the payee.”
How crypto businesses are filed
Visa’s Merchant Data Standards Manual, dated October 2026, leaves little choice on the code. A merchant selling cryptocurrency must use merchant category code 6051 or 6012, flag the sale with special condition indicator 7 and mark it as a quasi-cash transaction.
The same manual puts crypto exchanges, wallet providers and on-ramp providers using those codes for card-absent sales on its list of high integrity risk categories. A crypto business that sells coins by card starts its application in that bracket.
The fee on the statement
The mistake is to read the network’s interchange table as the merchant’s price. Visa’s US interchange document, effective October 24, 2026, says plainly that merchants do not pay interchange fees. They pay a “merchant discount” to their bank, typically a percentage per transaction that can bundle several services.
EU rules make that bundle easier to open. Under Article 9 of the Interchange Fee Regulation, the acquirer must price each card category and brand separately unless the merchant asks in writing for one blended rate, and under Article 12 it must list its own charge and the interchange fee apart on what it reports to the merchant. Before signing, ask for both figures, and read the reserve clause of the agreement.