In order to understand the workflow of credit card payment processing, one must first understand what payment processing is.
In a previous post, we discussed what is card payment processing. The workflow for processing a typical card payment could look something like this:

The key players in a credit card process are:
- Acquirer
- Issuer
- Credit Card Association
- ISOs (Independent Sales Organizations)
- Merchant
- Cardholder

Read more here: How does the payments ecosystem work? What does the payments workflow look like, from the merchant’s card payment to the acquirer?