Payments 101 · lesson 02 · 4 min

The five players in every card payment

Cardholder, merchant, acquirer, scheme, issuer — who does what, and where you sit.

Every card payment involves the same five roles.

The cardholder is the person with the card. The merchant is the business being paid. The acquirer is the merchant's bank — it provides the terminal or payment gateway and receives the money on the merchant's behalf. The scheme — Visa, Mastercard, or a domestic network like Jaywan in the UAE — is the switchboard connecting thousands of acquirers to thousands of issuers, with the rulebook everyone follows. The issuer is the cardholder's bank: it issued the card, holds the relationship, carries the credit risk, and has the final say on every transaction.

Money flows merchant-ward: cardholder → issuer → scheme → acquirer → merchant. Data flows the other way first, as an authorization request.

Everest sits with the issuer. When this portal talks about creating cards, approving transactions, cutting statements or handling disputes, that is the issuer's side of the table. Your integration makes your bank or fintech the issuer — Everest handles the machinery underneath.