Reading List
Market Entry: Licensing and Local Acquiring Reading List
Operators usually research market entry one country at a time, which is the expensive way to do it. Underneath the country names there are only a handful of patterns: the market that excludes foreign acquirers from domestic cards, the market that caps foreign ownership of a licensed entity, the market that mandates routing through a domestic switch, the market whose domestic-only scheme you cannot reach without a local licence, and the market where none of that applies and local acquiring is simply an economics question. This list puts the framework first and then uses eight markets as worked examples of those patterns — so the tenth country you research takes an afternoon rather than a quarter.
Who this is for
Operators planning expansion into a new payment market, PSP and payfac teams assessing licensing routes, and finance or legal teams pricing the cost of local entity establishment against an aggregator relationship.
Reading order
The full reading list
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Local Acquiring vs Cross-Border Acquiring: The Operator Reference
The framework everything else in this list is an instance of: four questions — reach, issuer approval treatment, economics, and regulatory mandate — that resolve the local-acquiring decision in any market. Read this before any country guide, because it tells you which parts of a country guide actually matter to you.
21 min read
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South Korea Payments Operator Guide: Local Acquiring, PGs, and VANs
The strictest pattern: licensing exclusion. Cross-border acquiring is perfectly legal in Korea and simply cannot reach Korean-issued cards, which must route through a licensed domestic PG. A worked example of why 'is it legal' is the wrong question to start with.
15 min read
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Indonesia Payments Operator Guide: QRIS, BI-FAST, and the Wallet Stack
The ownership-cap pattern. Bank Indonesia's PJP framework constrains foreign shareholding in a licensed payment institution, so the realistic route is through an already-licensed local player rather than direct licensing — plus the GPN routing mandate on domestic debit.
15 min read
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China Payments: The Foreign Operator's Guide
The effectively-closed pattern. A PBOC licence requires a PRC entity and discretionary approval that has rarely gone to foreign-controlled applicants, so acceptance runs through licensed intermediaries. Also covers what happens after go-live, which most market guides skip entirely.
16 min read
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Saudi Arabia's Payment Stack: Mada, SARIE, and the Vision 2030 Infrastructure
The domestic-scheme pattern. Mada is not reachable through cross-border acquiring, so the reach argument decides the question before economics or approval rates enter it — the cleanest version of the decision in this list.
8 min read
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PSP Licensing and Local Acquiring in Brazil: The Operator Guide
The licence-category pattern. BCB's payment institution categories include a distinct acquirer (credenciador) authorisation, and the choice between pursuing it and entering through an established local acquirer is a timeline and treasury decision as much as a regulatory one.
11 min read
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Payment Licensing in Mexico: IFPE, ITF, and Local Acquiring Under CNBV and Banxico
The two-regulator pattern. CNBV and Banxico divide responsibility for authorisation and payment-system access, which means the licensing question has two answers and operators routinely get a clean response from one and a surprise from the other.
14 min read
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Colombia Payments Operator Guide: SFC Foreign Ownership, SEDPE Capital, and FX Repatriation
The affirmative-permission pattern. Where most markets are silent on foreign ownership, Colombian regulation states positively that no cap applies — a useful contrast with Indonesia, and a reminder that regulatory silence and regulatory permission are different findings.
15 min read
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Turkey Payments Operator Guide: Licensing, Direct Acquiring, and TROY
The direct-acquiring pattern. A market where local licensing is genuinely attainable for foreign operators, closing the list on the case where the answer to 'do we need a local entity' is a straightforward commercial calculation rather than a constraint.
17 min read