How to Enhance Rate of High Risk Merchant Account Approval

A merchant requires a business banking account for accepting credit card payments involved in retail sales. There are generally three types of high risk merchant account services provided by financial institutions worldwide.

The account can be a retail account, MOTO account or Internet account. Retail accounts are useful for executing point of sale transactions, MOTO for mail and telephone orders and Internet account for online transactions. 

All of the accounts differ in their fee structure and per transaction charge. So, it requires a great amount of critical thinking on a merchant’s side, for getting quick account approval.

Following steps must be considered for achieving hassle-free approval:

1. Explore all payment options with due consideration; already available in your business. Evaluate options for conducting business post account approval. Plan in advance about how online order services will get processed after account approval.

2. Understand primary reason for rejected merchant account applications and try to avoid presenting high credit card risk in application form. High credit card risk means high –charge backs (customer refunds) and diminished chances of application approval.

3. Try to get a clear picture on future trends for chargebacks by making a chart of previous annual refunds. Do some number crunching and include this information in your application.

4. Analyze your business history i.e. how long you are in a particular business. This helps in getting easy account approval from financial institutions.

 5. Get some knowledge about associated security risks with online payment options. Investigate some gateway security providers such as VeriSign to protect your mail and online payment processing methods from potential frauds.

6. Greater business revenue increases your chances of application approval in short period.