Set up your account for in-person payments

Determine your Adyen account structure and create stores.

For point of sale, your Adyen account has three levels:

Company level. A single account represents the core business entity. In most cases, this is where invoices for terminal orders are sent.
Merchant level. Under the company level, one or more merchant accounts will receive the payout of funds as well as reports for reconciliation. You can group merchant accounts together in account groups, but you will still receive payouts separately for each merchant account under the same company.
Store level. Under a merchant level, one or more stores represent the physical store locations, and are used to process point-of-sale transactions. Each store location is identified using a Store ID.

To process payments, each payment terminal has to be assigned to the store where the terminal is being used.

Note that it is possible to use merchant accounts to represent physical store locations.

Step 1: Determine account structure

Make sure to involve your Finance Department, because the account structure influences the bank settlement (payout of funds) and cost accounting (reconciliation).

There is no ideal merchant-store account structure. This comes down to your business needs. Considerations to take into account are:

Customer Area access: if there are multiple stores under a merchant account, users with access to the merchant account also have access to all those stores.
Various aspects are handled on the merchant account level:
- Payout of funds: bank transfers per merchant account.
- Invoice: created per merchant account.
- Transaction fees: booked and visible as a total per merchant account.
- Scheme fees, interchange, markup: this is transaction-level information, but in summary reports it is shown on the merchant account level only.
- Graphical reports in the Customer Area: show information for the merchant account and the stores under it.

A common setup is to use one merchant account for each business unit or physical store location. Each store location is then represented by a merchant account and has their own separate reporting and payout of funds.

If you operate a large number of physical store locations, we recommend using a merchant account per legal entity, country, or brand, with store IDs underneath to represent the physical stores. This reduces the number of reports and bank transfers to reconcile and reduces the effort to manage terminals, terminal configurations, and Customer Area users.

For more considerations, see Account structure and settlement and our general account documentation.

Account structure and settlement

	Merchant account for each store	Merchant account for each country or brand with store IDs underneath
Bank settlement	One bank transfer for each (physical) store.	One bank transfer for each settlement currency.
Transaction fees	Booked and visible for each store.	Booked and visible as total for each country or brand.
Scheme Fees, Interchange, Markup	Transaction-level information, one report file for each settlement. Store identified in summary reports by account name.	Transaction-level information, one report file for each settlement. Store indicated as data field for each transaction. In summary reports, information available on country-level only.
Invoice	Invoice possible for each store.	Invoice possible for each country, no separate invoice for each store.
Customer Area	Graphical reports for each store.	Graphical reports for each country or brand.
User credentials	User credentials can be assigned by store, making it possible to limit user rights accordingly.	authorized merchant users have access to all information regarding a country through the Customer Area. Stores can include daily end-of-day totals from the terminal.
Implications	Settlement of funds separated for each store which allows for a clear split in all Adyen reporting. However, in the case of many stores, large number of separate report files and bank transfers to be processed.	Simplifies terminal and configuration management, and reduces effort in managing user credentials. Reduces number of bank transfers to be reconciled.
	Limited possibility in Adyen reporting to group reporting by country or brand.	Requires some additional financial processes, for example to book specific transaction costs (separate scheme fees or balance transfers, etc.) which are only reported on a country or brand level to the individual stores, if merchant wants to allocated these costs for each store.
	Higher complexity in managing configurations, terminals and user credentials.
Suggested use case	Recommended for franchises or businesses where there is a need for real-time store reporting in the Customer Area.	Recommended where a business has many stores.

Step 2: Get merchant accounts

When you have determined an account structure, get one or more merchant accounts.

Log in to your Customer Area.
Go to Settings > Merchant accounts.
Select Request new merchant account.
In the test environment, select Yes to create a test merchant account, or No to switch to your live account.
Complete the requested details. For Channel, select In-person payments if that is your only sales channel, otherwise select Ecommerce.
We send you a confirmation by email when your merchant account is ready.

Step 3: Create stores

If you decided to create an account structure of a merchant account with stores underneath, wait until you've received confirmation of your merchant account(s) and then create one or more stores.

To create stores by making API requests, see Automate store management.

Below we describe how to create stores in your Customer Area.
For this task, you must have the following user role:

Merchant POS Terminal Management Admin

To add stores:

Log in to your Customer Area.
Go to In-person payments > Stores.
Select Add stores.
Select the merchant account that you want to add a store to.
The form now shows the country-based payment methods that we configure for the store by default.
To add more payment methods:
1. Select Edit payment methods.
2. In the side panel, select the checkboxes of the payment methods to add.
3. Select Confirm.
For payment methods that are not listed in the panel, see Add payment methods to your account.
Select Add store and in the side panel complete the fields with the details of your store.
To add more stores under the same merchant account with the same payment methods, repeat selecting Add store and completing the store details.
Select Submit request.

The store is added immediately.

Next steps

Configure features

Configure your account and terminals for the features you want to use.

Account

Learn more about Adyen accounts, users, and finance.

Account settings notifications

Receive status updates for your company and merchant accounts and stores.