Direct acquirer + gateway · UK & EU
A direct acquirer holding its own payment institution licences in the UK and the EEA, settling in seventeen currencies or in stablecoin.
Two payment institution licences and a Principal Membership with both card schemes is a combination almost nobody in this catalogue can match. It means PAYSTRAX holds the merchant account itself rather than introducing you to a bank that does, and when your chargeback ratio moves, the conversation about it happens with the company you signed with.
The Lithuanian and UK entities matter separately. PAYSTRAX UAB sits under the Bank of Lithuania and covers the EEA; PAYSTRAX Ltd sits under the FCA and covers the UK. An operator running both markets contracts with one group instead of stitching two providers together, which is the sort of thing that only becomes valuable at the point a regulator asks who processes what.
What you get on top is unfussy: cards with Apple Pay, Google Pay and Click to Pay, settlement in seventeen fiat currencies or in stablecoin, and card payouts. There is no cashier, no orchestration layer and no local-rail network for LATAM or Asia. This is the acquiring layer, sold as the acquiring layer.
Compliance scores 9.8 — the highest in the catalogue — because three separate credentials are published and checkable. Coverage drags at 6.0: the UK and the EEA is a narrow footprint next to providers running local rails on four continents. Tech sits at 5.0: no integration timeline, no SLA, no support hours.
Five weighted criteria, 1–10. A criterion whose key field the provider does not publish is capped at 6.9 rather than scored on a guess. How we score →
United Kingdom and the EU.
Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Click to Pay, stablecoin settlement.
PCI DSS — the company publishes a PCI DSS compliance page.
Take it seriously if you are licensed in the UK or an EEA market and card acquiring is the piece you are missing. Look elsewhere if your growth plan runs through Brazil or India — there is nothing here for those rails. First call: ask for approval rates by issuing country, and for the reserve terms, which stay private.
A real one. PAYSTRAX Ltd is an FCA-authorised payment institution, PAYSTRAX UAB is supervised by the Bank of Lithuania, and the group holds Principal Membership with both Mastercard and Visa. That last credential is the one that separates an acquirer from a gateway — Principal Members hold their own scheme licences rather than riding on somebody else's.
The United Kingdom and the EEA, with acceptance of all ISO currencies and settlement in seventeen of them. There is no published local acquiring in LATAM, Asia or Africa.
There is a public pricing page, but iGaming terms are quoted individually. Neither the rolling reserve percentage nor its hold period is published, so ask for both in writing before comparing the headline rate with anyone else's.
Work at PAYSTRAX? Write to us to have this profile verified. Send the documents behind the fields you want confirmed — licence entries, settlement terms, supported markets — and we will check them and mark the card as verified. If something here is already out of date, tell us and we will correct it. Partnership enquiries go to the same place.
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