A merchant bank is a financial institution that provides business level Payments to merchants for collecting payments from consumer bank or credit card Payments. If you are already selling products from a retail location, you have a Card Present (CP) merchant Payment. However, to sell from your Web site, you will also need a Card Not Present (CNP) merchant Payment. A CNP Payment is used by merchants that receive payments via the Internet or in situations when a payment is not physically presented to the merchant by the consumer at the time of the transaction (e.g. telephone orders).
In the payments industry, Independent Sales Organizations (ISOs), Merchant Services Providers (MSPs), and Value-Add Resellers (VARs) are most often the organizations that provide merchant Payments.
