What You Need To Know About High-Risk Merchant Processing Accounts

A high-risk merchant account is for businesses that operate with higher financial risks and chargebacks involved. If you have a high-risk business, there is a solid chance that traditional banks won’t allow you to open a merchant account. This denial is because of excessive chargebacks and fraud. However, you can find high-risk payment solutions at Shark Processing to cater to your needs.

On the other hand, low-risk accounts put restrictions on free transactions. In addition, the international currency and type of payment method such as digital currency have a lot to say when it comes to low-risk accounts. However, high-risk merchant accounts give a great deal of freedom to merchants to help their business grow. This article is all about high-risk merchant processing accounts. If you want to know more about it – keep reading!

What Are High-Risk Merchant Accounts?

A high-risk merchant account is a payment processing account for businesses that are considered to be high-risk to the banks. As high-risk businesses are more likely to have excessive chargebacks, therefore they are charged with higher fees for merchant services.

Characteristics

High-risk businesses are more prone to fraud and high chargebacks. That is the reason such businesses are considered volatile. However, the best payment gateways consider high-risk businesses to be risky ventures for several reasons. A few of these reasons are as follows:

● The high volume of transactions
● Monthly sales of 100,000$ or more
● Poor credit score and small business credit history
● Transactions in multiple currencies
● Recurrent subscription type payment services

These characteristics make a business high-risk.

Choosing High-Risk Merchant Processors

When you are on a hunt for a high-risk processor, there are a lot of things you need to be careful about. This is important because a lot of shady processors look to take advantage of you if you don’t know the basics of how to reduce chargebacks and take care of business models properly. Moreover, such companies seldomly fulfill their promises and pose a great threat to merchants. Therefore, it is important to know what factors to consider when choosing a high-risk processor. Following are few things you need to consider before you choose a high-risk processor:

Experienced

Before finalizing a high-risk payment processor, make sure the company fulfills all the needs of your business. The company should provide basic services such as credit card terminals, mobile payment solutions, payment gateways, and integration for your high-risk products and services. In addition, the staff must be trained to tackle high-risk accounts well.

Flexibility

The other thing that the merchant should consider is the flexibility of the contract. Usually, companies prefer to lock merchants into a three years contract. These long-term contracts demand auto-renewal and early termination fees, that most of the time high-risk providers don’t reveal at the start. Do not bound your business with long-term contracts as it’s hard to predict what future awaits in terms of business investment funding. Try to go for short-term contracts, ask questions, and ensure you’ve read their terms and conditions thoroughly.

Pricing Plan

Pricing plays a vital role for any merchant when it comes to choosing a high-risk processor. Account fees are billed monthly or daily and the processing fee is on a per-transaction basis. When it comes to processing percentage rates, merchants should always choose a high-risk provider that offers interchange-plus pricing plans over tiered pricing plans. Merchants can save a lot of money with interchange-plus pricing plans. In addition, transparency is the other key factor to choose this plan.

Value-Based Customer Service

Value-based customer service is what you need when it comes to choosing a high-risk processor. This includes round-the-clock support and troubleshooting services. In addition, answering emails timely and taking calls from customers 24/7 is also essential to sort out any issue the merchant is facing. Moreover, the processing provider should have self-help resources on their website to help merchants to solve their small problems on their own. In this way, the staff can focus on complicated issues and sort them out. Always check the reviews to ensure the value-based customer service of a high-risk processor.

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