Credit card processors are mostly responsible for data transmission and security when you use your card at a store or online to make a purchase.

The credit card processing industry features a slew of major players and companies such as Bank of America, Citibank, and Chase.

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Credit card processors are mostly responsible for data transmission and security when you use your card at a store or online to make a purchase.

There are two types of processors in the payment-card system. Front-end processors route transactions from merchants to the cardholder's bank to gain authorization; that is, they make sure a customer has enough available credit or funds to make a purchase. Back-end processors are responsible for a fund's settlement, which ends with the merchant receiving a deposit for transactions.

Below, we've outlined the major players in credit card processing and described their major strengths.

Bank of America

Bank of America Merchant Services has the advantage of functioning within the second-largest bank in the U.S. The service promises acceptance of all kinds of payments (credit cards, debit cards, electronic checks, and gift cards), access to funds on the next business day, and mobile support.

Citibank

The consumer division of Citigroup processes transactions in more than 100 currencies. It offers end-to-end processing services, from pricing to transactions, reporting, customer service, and billing.

Wells Fargo

One of the "Big Four" U.S. banks, Wells Fargo offers next-business day funding, encryption and tokenization technology, and support for both PIN and signature transactions.

JPMorgan Chase

Chase Paymentech, the payment processing arm of the largest bank in the U.S., authorizes and processes payments in more than 130 currencies. And like its peers, it offers analytics, fraud detection, and security solutions.

Barclays

Barclaycard payment solutions facilitates in-person, phone, web, and even mail order payments through desktop and portable card machines.

Fiserv

In on of the largest fintech tie-ups of 2019, Fiserv acquired First Data for an all-stock deal of $22 billion. Together, the companies provide a range of technology solutions to banks, merchants, and other businesses. Fiserv, a core banking vendor with a client list of 12,000 financial institutions (FIs), offers services including processing credit and debit card transactions for banks, while First Data provides payment processing and technology to over 4,000 FIs.

TSYS

Short for Total System Services, TSYS supports millions of buyers and sellers around the world through four major branches: issuing services, acquiring services, prepaid solutions, and merchant solutions.

Global Payments

Global Payments focuses on ensuring businesses accept all major forms of payments. To that end, its services include credit/debit/purchasing cards, electronic check conversion, money transfer, verification and recovery services, gift/loyalty cards, check guarantee, ACH checks, financial EDI services, and point-of-sale equipment.

FIS

In 2019 Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) acquired Worldpay for $35.36 billion in the largest-ever fintech deal. UK-based Worldpay is one of the longest-tenured online payment platforms, providing several payment services for both online and in-store channels, as well as many different services across channels, which diversifies its revenue streams. This acquisition could give FIS access to major e-commerce volume, as Worldpay processes 40 billion transactions annually.

Galileo

Salt Lake City-based Galileo Financial Technologies Inc offers APIs and a platform powering payment processing, banking, money transfers, and lending services for leading fintechs including Chime, Robinhood, Varo, and Transferwise to develop financial solutions.

Adyen

Adyen provides e-commerce companies with a payment platform that includes gateway, risk management, and front-end processing services. Adyen is a full-stack gateway and has famous merchants like Facebook and Spotify as clients. The company has brought in merchants thanks to its single platform that can support payments in any channel across 100 different payment methods and 200 countries. In early 2018 eBay replaced PayPal with Adyen as its top processor

BC Card

Seoel-based BC Card is South Korea's biggest payment processing company, offering end-to-end payment services including acquiring, local network operation, card issuing, and mobile payment solutions to both financial institutions and merchants.

Nets

Denmark-based payment processor Nets recently closed multiple deals including its merger with major European processor Concardis and acquisition of Poland-based card acquirers Dotpay and eCard for 73 million euros ($84 million).

Kabbage

Digital payment firm Kabbage has developed a solution that is more accessible to SMBs and midmarket sellers, in turn bringing digitization to these segments, which are two of the largest sets of check users.

Elavon

Formerly known as NOVA, this company is a subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp. Elavon processes payments in more than 30 countries for more than one million merchants.

More to Learn

These card processors handle so much volume and so many dollars every day, but they are still just one piece of the larger payments ecosystem, which includes issuers, merchants, and more.

Interested in learning more? Insider Intelligence publishes thousands of research reports, charts, and forecasts on the Payments & Commerce industry. You can learn more about accessing all of this content here.

And here is a related Payments & Commerce report that might interest you:

The Payments Ecosystem, which traces the path of an in-store card payment from processing to settlement across key stakeholders, forecasts growth, and defines drivers for key digital payment types through 2024.