Does an online credit card payment get submitted to the merchant or directly to the credit card company?

The online billing goes to the merchant who in turns processes it through the credit card company.

There is a back-end process to credit card captures. First, the payment details goes through the merchant via a secured form. Then it is sent through the payment gateway linking the site to the financial institutions. It gets processed by the credit card company who debits the credit card balance of the cardholder and credit the merchant account of the merchant.

who is the merchant