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, and in most cases cost effective, source is from one third party merchant account organization.
A high risk credit card merchant account is required by businesses that, when compared into a ‘traditional’ goods/services business, are at a higher risk of:
Bankruptcy
Fraudulent Transactions
High amount of sales
High rate of refunds
High rate of charge-backs
Other reasons a merchant may be categorized being a high risk are:
Merchants Location – Some merchant account providers will not accept merchants from certain countries.
The Product/Service the merchant sells is unlawful in some jurisdictions.
Merchant Credit history – Some providers won’t accept merchants with poor or no credit history.
Due into the high risk classification, most banks won’t provide a merchant account to people in a riskly industry (such as adult entertainment, replica goods, pharmacy etc). As such some outside providers offer their services to both general merchants and high-risk merchants.
Merchant account providers that happen to be developed to service high risk merchants will generally provide a higher level of fraud protection, with a purpose to decrease expense of their merchants incur. However, in order to cover the advanced of risk, rates with a high risk merchant account will continually be higher than their lower risk counter-parts.
When looking for a high risk merchant account, there are many factors to be able to take into account. Rates will be one very sound factors, like includes fees for refunds and charge-backs, along with transaction fees, the discount rate and recurring fees. Require need to contemplate fraud protection, customer service and reporting available you r as a merchant.