Who Needs a High Risk Merchant Account?
Merchant accounts are needed in order for a business to accept credit card payments. As a merchant, there are two places you can obtain a merchant account; a bank, or a third party provider. For online pharmacy merchant services merchants the most popular, so in most cases cost effective, source is from a 3rd party merchant account organization.
A high risk merchant card account is required by businesses that, when compared together with ‘traditional’ goods/services business, have a a higher risk of:
Bankruptcy
Fraudulent Transactions
High sum of sales
High rate of refunds
High rate of charge-backs
Other reasons a merchant may be categorized like a high risk are:
Merchants Location – Some merchant account providers will not accept merchants from certain countries.
The Product/Service the merchant sells is illegitimate in some jurisdictions.
Merchant Credit record – Some providers won’t accept merchants with poor or no credit history.
Due into the high risk classification, most banks will not provide a merchant account to people in a perilous industry (such as adult entertainment, replica goods, pharmacy etc). Consequently some other providers offer their services to both general merchants and heavy risk merchants.
Merchant account providers that are developed to service high-risk merchants will normally provide to the next stage of fraud protection, so that you can decrease the price of their merchants incur. However, in order to cover the more fantastic range of risk, rates high risk merchant account will always be higher than their lower risk counter-parts.
When hunting for a high risk merchant account, there are many factors take note. Rates will be one of the most important factors, as well as includes fees for refunds and charge-backs, along with transaction fees, the discount rate and recurring fees. You’ll need to look into fraud protection, customer service and reporting available you as a merchant.