Acquirer

The acquirer provides transaction processing to acceptors. For some transactions the acquirer may authorize a transaction acting as an agent of an issuer. In other cases (e.g., the transaction value exceeds a certain threshold) the transaction information is sent to an issuer or its agent for authorization. For the acquisition function the acquirer needs facilities that provide secure processing for translation of PINs in node-to-node systems, message authentication for transaction exchanges, etc. For combined acquisition and authorization functions, the acquirer needs security facilities to satisfy the requirements of the issuer it represents.