Merchant Services Provider

A Merchant Services Provider (MSP) is an organization that quotes a discount rate to the merchant and handles the setup and connections with the front-end and back-end processors to make sure that the merchant’s funds are correctly routed to the merchant’s. An MSP can be a merchant bank or an independent sales organization (ISO) for a merchant bank. The MSP is responsible for getting all the forms and information submitted to setup the merchant to accept credit cards and often provides software or other technology to allow the merchant to process the cards with the processor. In every case, the MSP is responsible for setting up the merchant with the processor to accept the different card types selected by the merchant. A MSP is usually responsible for the relationship between the merchant, card associations, processors and merchant bank.