Industry · Payment Processing
Every card payment a business accepts passes through a member of Visa or Mastercard. For most of the industry's history that member has been a bank, and a processor that was not a bank — a Stripe, a Square, a Toast — has reached the networks by renting a bank's membership. The bank's identification number sits on the transaction, the bank's name sits somewhere in the merchant agreement as the 'acquirer' or 'member bank', and the processor does the work. Georgia calls the practice rent-a-BIN, and in 2012 it wrote a bank charter designed to make it optional.
For a decade nothing happened. Then, on 30 April 2025, a Fiserv subsidiary processed the first card transactions in the country under a merchant acquirer limited purpose bank charter. Stripe's charter began business on 28 May 2026 and Checkout.com went live on 9 September 2026. As of 19 September 2026, three of the largest processors serving US merchants are their own acquiring banks — in one state, for one purpose, under a regulator most merchants have never heard of. Here is what a MALPB is, who holds one, and what it does and does not change in the agreement you sign.
The Georgia Department of Banking and Finance, which charters MALPBs and examines them, states the purpose plainly in its April 2025 announcement of Fiserv's first transactions: 'to create an optional bank charter for merchant acquirers, many of which are located in Transaction Alley, in order to provide direct access to the payment card networks (i.e. Visa, Mastercard) without having to contract with a third-party bank sponsor to utilize its bank identification number'. The same release notes that about 70% of US payment transactions flow through companies with operations in Georgia, which is why the charter is Georgia's rather than anyone else's.
It is a narrow charter. Under the statute, as summarised by the Independent Community Bankers of America when Stripe's application was approved, a MALPB 'cannot engage in general banking activities', may not solicit or accept deposits from the public, and may not sponsor ATMs or issue payment cards. What it may do is hold direct membership of the card networks and acquire and settle card transactions for merchants.
The Department's chartering guidelines, revised 4 June 2025, set the conditions. The statutory minimum capital is $3 million, with a leverage capital ratio of at least 10% on top, and the Department may require more. Settlement — actually moving merchant money — needs the Department's 'specific, prior written approval' as a separate step from the charter. A MALPB must employ at least 50 people in Georgia devoted to merchant acquiring within a year of opening. And there is 'no expedited processing': Fiserv applied in January 2024, according to Payments Dive, was approved on 27 September 2024 and received its permit to begin business on 11 April 2025.
The Department publishes approvals in its monthly bulletin, which is where the dates below come from unless stated otherwise.
One more company reached direct acquiring by a different road. Adyen (A-) is a Dutch bank, and rather than a Georgia charter it obtained a federal foreign branch licence: the Federal Reserve approved the application on 24 May 2021 and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency licensed the San Francisco branch to open on 15 June 2021. That is a federally supervised branch of a European bank, not a state charter, but for a merchant the effect is the same — the acquirer is the processor.
The clearest evidence of what a MALPB changes is Stripe's own acquirer disclosure, read on 19 September 2026. For the United States it says 'Stripe, LLC is a Payment Facilitator of the following Payment Method Acquirers' and lists six: Cross River Bank, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, Fifth Third Bank, Pathward N.A., PNC Bank, and — new — 'Stripe MALPB, 505 N Angier Avenue NE, Atlanta, GA'. Five sponsor banks and one subsidiary, side by side. Stripe has not replaced its sponsors; it has added itself to the list, and which one stands behind a given account is Stripe's decision, not the merchant's.
The Stripe MALPB acquirer terms, last updated 28 May 2026 — the day the charter began business — read much like any sponsor bank's terms. The 'Member Bank' authorises you to accept Visa and Mastercard, you must comply with the network rules and PCI standards, and 'Stripe or Member Bank may terminate these Member Bank Terms at any time, which may limit or terminate your ability to use the VM Payment Processing Services'. Two lines matter more than the rest. First: 'by using the VM Payment Processing Services and accepting VM Payment Cards, you are not establishing a depository or other account with Member Bank'. Second: the member bank has set up a 'Settlement Entity' to receive funds from the networks and pass them 'to Stripe or Stripe Payments Company, which will accept the Settlement Funds on your behalf'. Your money still flows through Stripe's non-bank entities. The charter changes who receives it from Visa, not who pays you.
Compare the arrangement most processors still run. Square (A), which has no such charter, says in its payment terms that 'we must enter into agreements with Networks, processors and acquiring banks', and that a seller whose volume crosses network-specified amounts must 'enter into an agreement directly with Square's acquiring banks' — the Commercial Entity Agreement — or face suspension. That is rent-a-BIN as the Georgia statute describes it, and it is how the overwhelming majority of US merchants are still acquired.
Start with what does not change. No price. Stripe's published US rates are 2.9% plus 30 cents online and 2.7% plus 5 cents in person, and nothing on its pricing page refers to the charter. Checkout.com quotes, and its announcements name no price. Clover's published plans make no mention of it. Nobody has tied a rate to the charter, and the direct-membership economics — one fewer party taking a slice — accrue to the processor unless it chooses to pass them on. No public evidence says it has.
No change in whether your funds are insured, either. They were not deposits before and they are not now. What Georgia adds is a rule about where the money sits while it is in transit. The chartering guidelines require that 'all merchant funds in process must be immediately deposited and maintained in a deposit account administered by a financial institution that is federally insured and authorized to do business in Georgia', that the funds 'are deemed to be the property of each individual merchant', that the account be kept 'for the benefit of the MALPB's individual merchants', and that the MALPB may not pledge them. The guidelines say outright that the aim is to isolate processing funds from creditors 'even in the event of bankruptcy'. That is a stronger written standard for in-transit merchant money than most sponsor-bank arrangements make visible to a merchant, and it is enforced by a state regulator with examination powers.
What does change is the dependency. A processor acquiring through a sponsor bank can lose that bank. Wells Fargo's non-renewal of its Fiserv joint venture is the recent example, and the FTC's Humboldt complaint this month described a processor moving merchants onto a different sponsorship arrangement to raise approval ratios. A MALPB removes the sponsor from the chain. The processor's network membership is its own, subject to the networks' continued acceptance and the Department's supervision. For an enterprise merchant negotiating a multi-year contract, that is a real difference in counterparty risk, in either direction: one fewer party who can pull the plug, and one fewer party checking the processor's underwriting.
The claims about performance are the companies' own. Checkout.com says direct network integration 'helps unlock faster innovation and superior acceptance rates'; Fiserv's then-chief executive Frank Bisignano, quoted by PYMNTS, said the charter let it 'sponsor its own merchant acquiring where appropriate and control more of the outcome'. Direct connections can reduce hops and the data lost between them, and that can lift authorisation rates. But no one has published before-and-after approval figures for merchants moved onto a MALPB, so as of September 2026 the benefit is asserted, not shown.
A MALPB is supervised by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance, a state agency, not by the OCC, the FDIC or the Federal Reserve. Its June 2026 bulletin reports that Governor Kemp signed House Bill 945 on 11 May 2026, effective 1 July 2026, which among other things reserves the term 'MALPB' for entities actually chartered as one and requires a MALPB to obtain the Department's approval before amending its articles of incorporation. The Department's chartering guidelines describe the capital framework as modelled 'in part on a combination of traditional banking capital standards and those applicable to similar entities currently operating as merchant acquirer members of card networks in the European Union' under the Payment Services Directive — which is to say, Georgia has imported the European model of the licensed non-bank acquirer that Adyen and Checkout.com already operate under at home.
Whether the charter spreads is the open question. Payments Dive quoted a lawyer in 2024 predicting that a successful Fiserv charter 'could open the floodgates for other merchant acquirers', and the article named Global Payments, Priority, Stripe and Square as likely candidates. Two years on, the count is three operating charters and the one dormant one. The Department's 2026 bulletins record no other MALPB approvals.
If you are on Stripe, Fiserv or Checkout.com, find the acquirer named in your agreement. Stripe's is on its acquirer disclosure page and can be any of six; the terms that apply to you are the ones for the acquirer assigned to your account. If it is the MALPB, read the two lines quoted above about deposits and settlement so you know what the word 'bank' does and does not mean here.
If you are negotiating an enterprise contract, the charter is a legitimate question to put to the processor: will this account be acquired through your own charter or through a sponsor, and can that change during the term? A processor that has spent a year or more and at least $3 million of regulatory capital to remove its sponsor should be able to say. And if you are a small merchant on a flat rate, nothing about your account has moved. The joint venture behind Wells Fargo Merchant Services (C+) expired on 1 April 2025 and Fiserv carried on processing for its merchants under a new multi-year agreement, according to Fiserv's own filing. Nothing in that filing, or in any of the three MALPB announcements, describes a merchant having to do anything at all.
