When Can a Bank Refuse Your Merchant Account Application?

Banks have stringent rules and regulations for accepting or rejecting merchant account applications, especially if we’re talking about high risk merchant account. Sometime the smallest of mistakes can get your application rejected. For novices it is common to fall prey to the following common mistake. Take a look to avoid a rejection. 

1.    Improper Documentation 

Banks demand a large number of documents to be supplied with each application in order to get every detail about the merchant before issuing an account. However, failure to supply any of the required documents can result in rejection of your application. 

2.    Better Business Bureau Complaint Record

In case any consumer reports are registered against your company at the BBB, you should do whatever it takes to rectify the problem or it might become the reason for your application rejection. 

3.    Misrepresentation

Banks go to a great length to verify whether information furnished by you is genuine. So make considerable efforts to ensure you only provide them with accurate information.

Know More about Different Merchant Risk Profiles

A variety of products are being sold over the Internet as well as at local stores. The merchants are identified by the items they trade, their payment processing techniques and profit margins. High risk merchants have well identified their business types and risk levels which help in measuring their performance by the counterparts. 

Given below is the categorization of different merchant business profiles in accordance to risk levels. 

1. Low Risk Merchants

Restaurant owners, toy and book retailers fall under the lowest risk category. They find it easy to qualify for normal loans, and rarely find any need to open a high risk merchant account. 

2. Medium Risk Merchants 

Merchants dealing in telecommunication services, health products and education sector fall under the medium risk category. They find it beneficial to open a high risk merchant account for processing credit card payments on their store.

3. High risk Merchants 

Online auction, gambling and debt collection agencies are considered highly risky by the nature of business. They make the largest pool of high risk merchant account holders.

Pros of Having a High Risk Merchant Account

High risk credit card processing is a fast, reliable and secure method for online payment processing. Consider using high risk merchant account to avoid credit-card fraud in your business. Given below are some pros of having Internet merchant account:

Real-time Processing

Real-time processing helps to include fraud scrubbing technologies by checking payments against a range of parameters. It carries out transactions instantly, offering electronic invoicing and fraud screening for all e-commerce companies.

Risk Management Services

The transaction testing environment provided for existing customers helps to manage the risk in a better way. Recurring billing services gets automatically activated once you open your account with a high risk merchant serviceprovider.

Professional Support

Active support is provided for addressing issues relating to customer chargebacks and merchant claims on fund settlement. They also offer options to change your payment schedule to effectively control the cash flows.

Security

A high risk merchant account tweaks the fund settlement and procedure twice a week providing a financial cover to account holders. Recurring bills are automatically deposited into a merchant account. Payments are verified using 3D secure and Geo-IP Match technologies for protecting e-commerce businesses against fraud.

Some reasons why you should open an offshore account

Offshore merchant accounts from AMLSV enable credit card processing for businesses from all over USA, Europe, North America and the Caribbean. Let’s take a look at the reasons why a business should obtain an offshore merchant account -

1. Merchant accounts with High Risk

Merchants that have been classified as ‘high risk’ apply for offshore high risk merchant accounts since their business model is such. Such businesses do not get approval from onshore banks.

2. Merchant Accounts with High Volumes

Merchants that have a cap on the monthly volumes apply for an offshore merchant account. Most offshore banks offer limitless volume options on merchant accounts. A merchant can have flexibility in going for various marketing strategies and not worry about the volume.

3. Leniency in rules

Off shore jurisdictions are much more lenient than onshore ones. These laws are very stringent especially for the gaming industry.

4. Access to International Markets

Offshore accounts offer the option of doing business in various currencies. The merchant can accept credit card transaction from any part of the world.

A Brief Look at Chargebacks

A chargeback is simply the overturn procedure of sales where a cardholder deducts the transactions from his visa account and receives a credit over it that makes him free from any financial obligations of the deal.

In this process, a card holder deducts the total amount of a transaction, which will further be deducted from a merchant’s account. However, in case of chargebacks, merchants can face dual drop with transactions and related merchandize.    

     

       

Why Chargebacks Occur?

Reasons like fraud transactions, customer disputes, authorization or processing errors and illegible copy requests are some factors resulting in chargebacks.

Keeping your business transactions literally free from chargebacks is impossible, but with some relative planning the amounts can be reduced or avoided up to a large extent. That’s why, proper processing procedures while transactions with assured details about the cardholder are always recommended.