Local Acquiring

Whether a transaction counts as domestic depends on the country of the card and on the merchant location that the acquirer assigns under card scheme rules. A UK business selling to customers in Brazil would normally process those cards cross-border through its UK acquirer; with local acquiring, the same sales go through an acquiring arrangement in Brazil, usually in local currency and sometimes with local card brands.

The main benefits are higher approval rates, because issuers tend to trust domestic transactions more, and lower costs, because cross-border transactions attract additional scheme fees and often higher interchange. The EU shows how rules can differ: the Interchange Fee Regulation caps interchange on consumer cards at 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit only where both the issuer and the acquirer are in the EU, so a business outside the EU acquiring EU cards from abroad does not benefit from those caps. Local acquiring can also unlock domestic payment methods and instalment options that customers expect.

Local acquiring usually requires a local legal entity or a PSP with licences and acquiring connections in the target country, and it can bring tax, reporting and data-residency obligations. Some countries require domestic transactions to be processed locally. Many global PSPs and orchestration platforms advertise local acquiring in numerous markets, so check which countries are genuinely domestic for your business and which only offer local-currency pricing.