Glossary
Payment facilitator
A provider such as Stripe, PayPal or Square that boards many small merchants under its own master merchant account. It says yes fast and reviews you afterward, which is why its closures come later and without warning.
Also called: payfac, PayFac, payment aggregator, master merchant.
Instead of each business getting its own merchant account, the payfac holds one with an acquirer and adds you as a sub-merchant. You can take payments the same day. The payfac carries your chargebacks toward the acquirer, so it monitors you by software against its prohibited-business list and your dispute and volume patterns.
When the software flags you, the payfac can hold funds, add a reserve or close the account. Stripe lists "an unexplainable sharp increase in processing volume" among its reserve triggers, which is what a good week on a new offer looks like.
Payfacs suit products that clear their lists. For high-risk verticals, a dedicated merchant account is slower to get but less likely to disappear in month 3.
Related terms: PSP, Merchant account, Merchant of record, Rolling reserve, Acquirer.