Who Nilson Named as the Five Largest US Acquirers in 2025
The Nilson Report’s own site names Fiserv, JPMorgan Payments, Worldpay, Global Payments, and Bank of America as the five largest US merchant acquirers in 2025, ranked by Visa and Mastercard purchase volume, part of a broader ranking covering the top 59 merchant acquirers in the US. The named order is public; the exact dollar volume and market-share figures behind that ranking remain paywalled, visible only as redacted placeholders in Nilson’s own public excerpt.
Naming five acquirers this large in one ranking is itself a useful data point for an ISO agent: it confirms the acquiring side of this industry runs through a genuinely small set of large processors, even as thousands of ISOs and sub-agents sell into merchants on top of that infrastructure.
The 2024 Numbers Behind the Names
A year earlier, Nilson’s own press release, distributed via GlobeNewswire and quoting Nilson Report publisher David Robertson, gave real transaction counts for 2024: JPMorgan Payments processed 40.98 billion transactions to take the top spot for the first time, Fiserv processed 40.72 billion, the company that had held the top spot in 2023, and Worldpay processed 34.15 billion, retaining third place. That same ranking, covering nearly 60 companies, put 34 million in-store and online merchant locations across the US at year-end 2024.
The two rankings describe different years and different measures: a 2025 list ordered by dollar volume without published figures, and a 2024 list ordered by transaction count with real numbers attached. The 2024 transaction counts should not be read as describing the 2025 list’s exact order. Bank of America and Global Payments both appear in the 2025 top five but sit outside the 2024 ranking’s confirmed top three by transaction count.
The Numbers
The five largest US merchant acquirers in 2025 were Fiserv, JPMorgan Payments, Worldpay, Global Payments, and Bank of America, ranked by Visa and Mastercard purchase volume, part of a ranking covering the top 59 US merchant acquirers.
Nilson Report, Merchant Acquiring Data, Rankings and Industry Insights
JPMorgan Payments processed 40.98 billion transactions in 2024 to rank first for the first time, ahead of Fiserv at 40.72 billion and Worldpay at 34.15 billion, which retained third place.
The Nilson Report, Top Acquirers of Card Payments at US Merchants (2024 ranking)
Nilson’s 2024 acquirer ranking covered nearly 60 companies against 34 million in-store and online merchant locations across the US.
The Nilson Report, Top Acquirers of Card Payments at US Merchants (2024 ranking)
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- Nilson Report, Merchant Acquiring Data, Rankings and Industry Insights
- The Nilson Report, Top Acquirers of Card Payments at US Merchants (2024 ranking)