More on Merchant Accounts

[geddon]

I can confirm that worldpay is reliable but they charge much - based on experience.

[stymiee]

It's a shame merchants outside of the US don't have as many options as we do. There's so much competition that anyone who spends enough time researching it will almost assuredly be rewarded.

[Will]

So what are the options for merchants outside of the USA?
I think the list will be very limited.

[LivingLegend]

stymiee that was very accurate information but I would like to add a type of merchant account, that businesses use all the time, not knowing what they are getting into and was not covered in your article or anywhere in this forum for that matter. I will admit I have been in the high risk business for years and this may be a bit biast

*What is an agregator account?
an agregator account is when a merchant providor will take 20-50 low risk merchants and put them in a third party account and use those low risk merchants to sneak in a high risk merchant and all those businesses are viewed as one merchant.

(this ex. uses chargebacks as the reason this is not the only reason this is used)
example: Lets say I own a high risk business adult, credit repair, Online pharmacy the list goes on and on and I have a high chargeback % well to hide that some dishonest providors use those 20-50 low risk merchants and put them in one third party merchant account. Because they have low chargeback % they can then sneak that one high chargeback merchant in to that account. It benefits the high risk merchant because he now gets better rates than most high risk providors offer and the low risk merchants don't know anything about it they are usually small businesses who are about to get the shaft!

*Why am I about to get the shaft you ask?

simple they are ILLEGAL but yet high risk merchants still seek them out and about every two to three months they get shut down. The low risk merchant that didn't know anything about it can't accept credit cards until they find another providor and the high risk merchant waits a couple months until they can create or find another agregator account. There might be 2-6 months a year that they are out of business if you are one of this people don't feel bad I have placed merchants doing 150M a month in credit card processing who were duped into using this type of account often high risk merchants think they are getting better rates they usually are not.

* I did not wright this article to bash third party accounts, there are a lot of third party providors that do not do this and provide a invaluable service to very small merchants (not that I would recommend any) just wanted to raise awareness and strongly recommend not using this type of account as it will only lead to frustrations. For you low risk merchants agregator accounts are a lose/lose situation for you. For high risk merchants third party accounts have too many restrictions, do not offer unlimited processing volume, and most of the time they will cap your business and not allow you to grow.

I hope this article saves some High risk merchants and low risk merchants from a lot of agravation.

[Gate2Shop]

There are many that offer most of what they offer in the states, and a lot of them are opening offices in the state because of the world wide ecom demand.