Issuers and Acquirers: Who Does What for Whom?
An issuer is a bank or financial institution which provides debit, credit, and/or prepaid cards to consumers on behalf of payment card schemes. Typical payment card schemes include Visa and Mastercard, for example. In 2018, 668.87 million cards were in circulation in the EU alone. Every one of these cards was provided to consumers via an issuer.