Why Businesses Get Denied a Credit Card Processing Application

When you apply for credit card Processing, you have no idea whether your application will be accepted or denied. The details about the decision of not issuing a credit card processing you have applied for reaches you through the mail, in which the details about the decision is given more precisely.

Let’s now discuss various possible reasons for declination of application for credit card processing :

Age: Your age is another factor for the denial of your request. If you are under 18, the issuer will not accept your request, as it is not the legal age.Your age is another factor for the denial of your request. If you are under 18, the issuer will not accept your request, as it is not the legal age.

Incomplete application form: If you have not filled the application form completely or correctly, your application will be declined. So it is better to apply for credit card processing online as it will not submit your request until and unless all the fields are properly filled.

Loan balance: If you want to apply for credit card processing, make sure that you pay your loan balance regularly if any. When you apply for credit card processing, your credit history is checked and if it is negative, the bank or the processor will hesitate to accept your request to avoid risk.

Healthy credit balance: It is good practice to keep your credit balance healthy. In other words, you should only use a portion of the credit available instead of using it to the fullest. Healthier the credit card score more are the chances of approval.

Inquiries on credit report: It is advisable not to apply for many credit cards or credit cards processing, especially in short span of time; this may lead to declining of application. Lesser is your credit inquiries; better are the chances of getting your next approval when you would apply.

Low income: Very common factor of declination of application is income of the applicant. Minimum income required for application varies by Banks and Processor, and if the applicant fails to match the minimum income requirement (although this requirement is not published), his/her application can get denied. So before applying for credit card processing, get an idea about minimum income required.

Negative Processing History: Another reason for credit card application denial can be the number of credit cards processing account used by the applicant that have negative Statement. If there are accounts closed due to high Chargeback it can cause a problem in getting approval for a credit card processing.

TMF or Matchlist: If you are placed on Match list or identified as a TMF merchant it would be a big reason for not getting approval for your Credit Card Processing Account.

Don’t fulfill minimum requirement: your request will be declined if you do not fulfill minimum requirement like you don’t have an SSL secure and PCI compliant website. Or you have been suspended by any card brand processor, or any Data compromise investigations was there for you and your business.

As a conclusion, you need to make Sure before applying for a credit card processing and get prepared, you choose a payment service or merchant service provider who can proactively help you with this.

For More Information Please Visit www.merchantstronghold.com, or mail us at info@merchantstronghold.com

Lets Understand The High Risk Merchant And Merchant Processing

When Business is established and applies for a payment gateway at the Bank, they get approved or disapproved from the risk departments considering the business to be high risk business or Low risk business. There are few reasons why any business can be considered as a high risk business. Some of the risk factors that make a business HIGH RISK are as follow :

• You have lost your previous merchant account due to high chargeback ratio.
• Questionable sales and marketing tactics
• Potential legal and financial liability
• Your credit is really bad.
• An industry is known for excessive chargebacks or fraud incidents
• Trial continuity business
• Previous credit card processing is not good enough
• You’ve been branded as a terminated merchant (TMF).

It is important to note, that this high risk merchant account categorization is based on your business’ industry, regardless of your individual businesses’ track record. Additionally, the high risk category includes businesses who have been dropped by a previous credit card processor, businesses that are on the MATCH or TMF list, companies whose owners have bad personal credit or low credit scores, or businesses who are based outside the US.

Common High Risk Industries

While any business with bad personal or business credit scores, a high chargeback history, a startup, or high frequency or high average tickets can be considered high risk on an individual basis, the majority of high risk businesses are labeled as such by the industry they operate in.

Some examples of high risk industries include:

• Document Preparation
• Downloadable Software
• Educational Software
• Electronics Business
• Extended Warranties
• Financial Aid Consulting
• Financial Services
• Fine & Cosmetic Jewelry
• Insurance Providers
• Magazine Subscriptions
• Air & Water Filtration
• Antiques & Collectables
• Apparel Sales
• Auto Parts & Accessories
• Auto Transport
• Businesses with Bad Credit
• Beer, Wine & Liquor Sales
• Computer Hardware
• Debt Consolidation
• Discount Buying Service

Build the Perfect Online Business with these 6 Tips In USA

Virtual market is growing bigger and bigger every day. Most of the population relies on the Internet to shop or get things done. From sending an e-mail to banking, shopping, purchasing services and packages, everything can be done in few clicks. This brings a lot of opportunities for new entrepreneurs, but to make the best use of this opportunity you have to follow the right track. There are few points that one should consider before starting an online business. These are:

Focus on Local market: You should not avoid small steps to achieve big goals. Instead of trying to reach the global market and providing everything, study local market, gather knowledge about demand and customer’s taste, and offer them something unique or different from your competitors. If you want to capture the market you should have something unique to offer, but before going further do check out copyright infringements.

Logistics: The product you choose at the initial stage of your online business, matters the most. You should be very cautious about it. The product should be:

• Non-fragile (it will end up in pile of damaged returns)
• Easy to make (so that it takes minimum time)
• Low making charges (so that you do not end up in investing huge amount)
• Should be easy to ship (should not be heavy or too big, as it will cost more).

It is not easy to manage supply chain and fulfillment of orders at the initial stage of business, but as you gain more and more experience you can try your hands on the variety of products. So it is advisable to start small and get adventurous later.Don’t opt for any popular product because someone is definitely providing the best of it and has probably already captured the market. It is rather a better idea to specialize in just one specific product and make a place in the market.

Understand your customer: Choice of the product as per the customer’s requirement is very important. Always focus on impulse buys and make sure you give satisfactory service to your customer because a happy customer always returns. Better the experience, more the chances of the customer coming back again and again. Once you have a good number of repeat customers, it is the right time to introduce a new product into the market.

Adding value to your product: Customers always like if they get something extra. If you provide extra service along with your product, it will not only help you retain your customer for a lifetime but also help you earn more customers. For example, if you are selling camera only, give offers like photography classes; which will be an add-on to your product and will also help in increasing sales. Similarly, if you are selling books on learning the particular language, start language classes as an add-on. These kinds of offers attract the attention of customers and might create customers for a lifetime.

Comfortable buying experience: If your experience is good, it is quite possible that you will visit again. It is very important that your process of making payment is simple and easy. It is advisable to provide a variety of payment options to the customer so that he/she can choose the method with which he/she is comfortable. If you do not provide payment options according to the customer’s choice, you might end up in losing the customer. It is very important to make the customer comfortable with the purchasing and payment method. For creating a smooth online shopping, it is important to work with a payment partner who provides you with features and services you want and in terms and conditions that are comfortable for both the parties.

Internet security: For an e-commerce website, it is important to take extra measures on Internet security as there are thousands of prying eyes looking for an opportunity to hack and misuse data or information. Customers are well aware of security threats and are quite cautious about making purchases online. Purchasing products or services online means that you are sharing your sensitive information like credit card processing number, address, phone number etc.; and if this information falls in the wrong hands, it will not only affect the customer but also hamper the reputation of your business. So it is important to take special measures to provide Internet security and make the website, and the payment process safe.

Requirements of Getting High Risk Merchant Account And Payment Gateway in USA

In this rapidly transforming world, where businesses are regularly changing their process of dealing with customers. With the development of processes, the businesses now have started accepting the payments through credit cards. Although, of all the business process up-gradation with the help of technology, that eases the maintenance of business, accepting card payments is one of the steps that makes easier for customers to pay directly through their account.

But, many times merchants who are planning to start accepting card payments have very less knowledge about what is required for the establishment of a merchant account. As there are few requirements and prerequisite for getting and maintaining a merchant account that enables the business owner to collect payments via credit cards.

Typically a merchant never directly contact a bank for the merchant account initiation that should collect the card transactions. The reason for this there is a strong need for dealing with fraudulent and error transactions that need to be handled with the guidance of professionals. For a merchant account that collects card transaction, the merchant should contact a processing company that acts as an intermediate between merchant and bank. They help the merchant to deal with the card transactions effectively and help them to get funded by the bank against the legal transactions.

For merchants in the United States, we have listed the requirements of the account application that can help them to be ready with all sorts of documents that will help them to apply with correct documents while filling the merchant account application form:

All the merchants who are based in the U.S. they need to provide the general requirements that are listed below that will help the merchant to prove that she/he is a legal resident of United States:

• Registered business name in the U.S.: The merchant account applicant must be legally incorporated in the U.S. or at least merchant registered its business with the local governance that could give them “Doing Business As” name (DBA).
  
  
• S. bank account: The merchant should have a running U.S bank account, in which the merchant will get the funds for their transfers deposited.
  
  
• The physical address of merchant: A merchant must have a physical presence that is an address of living or doing business that can be verified.

The above document will help a merchant to show their legal presence in the United States, if a merchant has the above necessary proofs, they can apply in the bank for a merchant account that can help them to collect payment through credit cards.

Now for filing the application for merchant account the documents will vary with the businesses risk volume, that is categorized with the dependence of these factors including nature of the business, monthly processing, previous processing experience, etc. Although, the basic things a merchant needs to fulfill while applying for the account is:

• Application Form: The application form that will collect the basic information of the business and applicant. The information includes physical address, Tax ID, average sales, bank account details, web address, phone number, etc. There is an advance pricing agreement that is regarding the pricing of the products.
  
  
• Business license: The applicant’s business requires any kind of permit before being sold; the applicant needs to provide the appropriate license copy at the time of application.
  
  
• Incorporation proofs: if the applicant claims that their business has the existence in all over the world, then there is a requirement of providing/submitting the copy of incorporation paperwork, that proves that business is illegible to collect payment from around the world.
  
  
• Voided check: The applicant needs to submit the voided check of their business bank account, with the business name pre-printed on it, this is called permanent check. If the permanent check is not available, then the merchant will need to submit a letter from the bank stating the account details and have the bank authority signature on it.
  
  
• W-9 form: This is an application form for a Federal Tax ID. It’s not possible the form can be substituted with the SS-4 form with which a merchant can obtain the Tax id.

Personal guarantee: The processor tries to be safe from the risk of debt that occurs form the fraudulent activity that is the undeniable part of card payment transaction. The personal guarantee is basically required by the privately held companies due to the nature of the business.

Other than the document, the businesses that are listed in higher risk categories need to provide these additional details about their business:

• Business financial statements: Normally the details of last years of business transactions are required.
  
  
• Personal financial statements: Again the details of last two years of personal account details.
  
  
• Processing details: If the business has previously accepted the card payments, then at least of last three month of processing of payment details needs to be shared with the processor.

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High Risk Merchant Services Provide Off Page SEO

Off Page SEO

Off-page, SEO refers to techniques that can be used to improve the position of a website in the search engine results page (SERPs). Many people associate off-page SEO with link building but it is not only that. In general, off Page SEO has to do with promotion methods – beyond website design –for the purpose of ranking a website higher in the search results

Benefits of ‘off-site SEO’ to Website

Increase in rankings – The website will rank higher in the SERPs and this also means more traffic.

Increase in PageRank – Page rank is a number between 0 and 10 which indicates the importance of a website in the eyes of Google. It is the system invented by Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google founders) and one of the reasons that Google was so successful in showing the most relevant results to the searcher.  Page rank today is only one out of the 250 factors that Google is using to rank websites.

More exposure – Higher rankings also means greater exposure because when a website ranks in the top positions: it gets more links, more visits, and more social media mentions. It’s like a never-ending sequence of events where one thing leads to another and then to another etc.

On- page SEO, Off-page SEO refers to activities you can perform outside the boundaries of your website. The most important are:

• Link Building
• Social Media Marketing
• Social bookmarking
  

Online Best High Risk Merchant Account For Financials Institution

Merchant Stronghold helps give a competitive edge to financial institutions. We harness relationships to help you meet continued demands for new customers, new deposits and new sources of revenue. We know how important attracting profitable customers and maintaining long-term relationships are to your financial institution.

Become a Partner

As competition and Federal Regulations continue to erode margins on traditional banking products, few financial institutions have fully tapped the potential that resides in your market for merchant acquiring services. Merchant Stronghold can become your ally in offering the latest in merchant processing programs to your business and commercial customers. This partner program provides a sales force dedicated to your institution, to help leverage your brand name and market presence, effort to attract and retain new customers and increase profitability.

Our Goal is to help your financial Institution to every day, that includes customer service, terminal help desk, marketing materials, equipment deployment and programming, merchant training and activation, online transaction information, referral updates and reporting and allowing you to focus on core banking products and services.

Partner Benefits:

• Increase earnings from ongoing revenues
• Grow deposits by capitalizing on strong brand recognition and branch distribution system
• Reduce cost through Merchant Stronghold sales proficiency, experience and economies of scale—Merchant Stronghold assumes expenses, merchant liability (including fraud and chargebacks) and operational responsibility for the back-office support functions (customer service, help desk, etc.)
• Create a long-term alliance that can bring best-in-class sales, service, products, branding, distribution, and pricing to your merchant business
• Access a professional, dedicated Merchant Stronghold sales force that works branch referrals and cold calls on merchants in your current markets
• Reverse cross-sales opportunities with Merchant Stronghold back to your branch staff for core bank products and services

Online Best High Risk Merchant Account For Financials Institution

Merchant Stronghold helps give a competitive edge to financial institutions. We harness relationships to help you meet continued demands for new customers, new deposits and new sources of revenue. We know how important attracting profitable customers and maintaining long-term relationships are to your financial institution.

Become a Partner

As competition and Federal Regulations continue to erode margins on traditional banking products, few financial institutions have fully tapped the potential that resides in your market for merchant acquiring services. Merchant Stronghold can become your ally in offering the latest in merchant processing programs to your business and commercial customers. This partner program provides a sales force dedicated to your institution, to help leverage your brand name and market presence, effort to attract and retain new customers and increase profitability.

Our Goal is to help your financial Institution to every day, that includes customer service, terminal help desk, marketing materials, equipment deployment and programming, merchant training and activation, online transaction information, referral updates and reporting and allowing you to focus on core banking products and services.

Partner Benefits:

• Increase earnings from ongoing revenues
• Grow deposits by capitalizing on strong brand recognition and branch distribution system
• Reduce cost through Merchant Stronghold sales proficiency, experience and economies of scale—Merchant Stronghold assumes expenses, merchant liability (including fraud and chargebacks) and operational responsibility for the back-office support functions (customer service, help desk, etc.)
• Create a long-term alliance that can bring best-in-class sales, service, products, branding, distribution, and pricing to your merchant business
• Access a professional, dedicated Merchant Stronghold sales force that works branch referrals and cold calls on merchants in your current markets
• Reverse cross-sales opportunities with Merchant Stronghold back to your branch staff for core bank products and services