Glossary
Payment service provider (PSP)
A payment service provider, PSP, is a licensed company that offers merchants payment acceptance: it signs the merchant, connects it to one or several acquirers and local payment methods, collects and settles the funds, handles refunds and chargebacks, and carries the regulatory obligations of a payment institution. The PSP's product is the service to merchants; the software it runs on may be its own or licensed.
What a PSP does and does not do
A PSP holds the licence or registration its countries require, performs KYC and KYB of its merchants, prices its service, contracts with acquirers and method providers, reconciles and settles. What it needs to do all that is a platform: a gateway and checkout for merchants, a vault, routing across providers, cabinets, a ledger and reports. Building that platform is a different business from running the service, which is why many PSPs license it.
PSP, acquirer, aggregator, facilitator
An acquirer is a scheme member bank; a PSP may be an acquirer or may resell acquiring. A payment aggregator or payment facilitator signs merchants under its own master account with an acquirer and settles them itself, which in many countries is a registered status of its own. The words overlap across markets; the licence behind them is what matters.
On the platform
PSPs are Tranzify’s main clients: the platform gives them the software, under their brand and in their or our cloud, while the licence, the merchants, the contracts and the money stay with the PSP. Tranzify is not a PSP and provides no payment service.
Updated: 2026-11-08