See an example
For an example of how a growing business adjusts its account structure, refer to Example account structures.
On this page, you'll learn about the most important factors to consider when defining your account structure.
When defining your account structure, there are trade-offs to consider. Having fewer merchant accounts simplifies your operations and minimizes the number of reports you need for reconciliation. But having more merchant accounts allows for increased granularity in reporting, user permissions, and how you get paid.
In general, we recommend that you have as few merchant accounts as possible, as long as you have enough to accommodate your business needs.
If you need more help defining your account structure, contact our Support Team.
Legal entities
You need at least one merchant account for each legal entity that you process payments with. You cannot link a single merchant account to two legal entities, for example one in the US and another one in France.
However, one legal entity can have multiple merchant accounts. For example, a legal entity in the US can have multiple US merchant accounts, for ecommerce or in-person payments.
Invoicing
By default, you receive your monthly invoice at the company account level. You will get separate invoices for each merchant account that is under a different legal entity than the company account.
Acquiring
Our merchants often open legal entities with us in regions where we offer local acquiring. This may provide several benefits such as reduced interchange and scheme fees, increased authorisation rates, as well as faster settlement.
Your acquiring connections are configured at the merchant account level, and a single merchant account can be associated with only one acquiring region. For more information, refer to Global payment processing.
Getting paid
Adyen pays out to you at the merchant account level. The more merchant accounts you have, the more payout batches you will receive.
Your merchant account must be associated with the legal entity that owns the bank account to which funds will ultimately be settled. If you are accepting payments in multiple currencies, you may link multiple bank accounts to a single merchant account.
Although you may have multiple bank accounts linked to your merchant account, you may only have one bank account per settlement currency. If you want to split funds from different countries/regions in the same currency, you need to create multiple merchant accounts.
Reporting
The reports used for reconciling bank settlements are generated at the merchant account level. You can choose to configure merchant accounts by individual business lines or geography, based on how you want to receive this information.
Having fewer merchant accounts reduces the amount of reports required for financial reconciliation, which is especially important to consider if you reconcile manually.
Risk management
Risk rules for RevenueProtect and Dynamic 3D Secure are configured at the company account level, with the option to overrule settings at the merchant account level.
Risk rules at the merchant account level are useful if you want to establish a different risk profile based on business line or location. For example, physical goods and digital goods can have different risk factors, and risk considerations for transactions originating in the US can differ from those originating in the EU.
User permissions
Users with access to the company account have access to all merchant accounts under that company account. To limit user permissions, you need to create separate merchant accounts.
You can limit a user's permissions to either specific merchant accounts, or to an account group.
In-person payments
We recommend creating separate merchant accounts for ecommerce (online payments) and in-person payments (point of sale). Local legal entities are required for point-of-sale processing, so you need to create a separate merchant account for each region where you process POS payments.
If you operate multiple physical stores in the same region, you can link these to one merchant account, using the storeID to identify the individual store location.
Alternatively, you could create separate merchant accounts for different stores. This is required if you need to:
- Receive separate payouts in the same currency or invoices for the different stores.
- Limit user credentials to a particular store.
For more information, refer to Set up your Adyen account for in-person payments.