When you are
in business, marketing your products or services alone is not enough. It’s the
age of paperless money, electronic transactions and therefore, you should be
extremely careful with your customer’s money and their personal information in
order to ensure business operations. In no way or at no time would you want your
customers to think that they are indulging in a faulty service and that their
money or financial information could get compromised! That’s where high risk merchant accounts can help.
If you are running
a business, which operates in a high risk market and has risks of financial
failures looming large, you almost certainly need a high risk merchant account;
a regular merchant account won’t serve the purpose and even if does, it might
fail you at the most crucial hour.
So, in a Nutshell …
A high risk
merchant account is a facility provided to businesses that accept a major chunk
of their payments through credit cards (Card Present or Card Not Present).
Protected by anti-fraud security systems, high risk merchant accounts help
e-commerce enterprises (and others who receive orders telephonically) to
introduce additional layers of security so as to eliminate the possibility of
credit card fraud or data theft.
Do You Need One?
No matter
what type of business you are running, you will need a merchant account
at some point in time.
Well, because
this is the best way to receive payments via credit or other types of cards. Operation
of such an account is governed by an agreement between a credit card acceptor
(business) and the acquirer (financial institution, providing the business the
facility).
High risk
merchant services no doubt charge higher fees in order to compensate the risk
involved, they also save businesses from TMF statuses
and deduct relatively lower chargeback fees. Such services are governed by
flexible chargeback policies.
Who Is An Acquirer?
A bank or
financial institution, which provides a business credit card merchant account
and has relationship with the merchant’s personal bank account and the Visa and
MasterCard services is called an acquirer.
The acquirer
provides high risk merchant accounts and is then liable to clear the card
transactions to the merchant’s bank account as and when the transactions are
charged from the card holder’s account.
Important Pointers
Acquiring a
high risk merchant account from one of the acquirers makes it easy and safe to
process credit cards. It is the quickest and easiest way to receive a payment
that is due to the business account.
From online
casinos, adult service providers, travel services, telemarketing businesses to
home run businesses and online auctions, hundreds of e-commerce businesses get
such accounts. Businesses with high transaction volumes, bad credit, off shore
operations or TMF statuses are the best candidates for high risk merchant
account services.
