Why More Than One Merchant Account is Necessary

Why is it that businesses involved in industries such as Vitamins, nutraceuticals, skincare and other similar markets now find themselves needing more than one merchant account? Ask a nutraceutical merchant account owner and they might tell you about having their account shut down without warning in the past, left deprived of their ability to process credit cards.

These days it’s becoming more and more apparent that in order to maintain security with your business it is necessary to hold multiple merchant accounts. What may not come as a surprise is that the specific businesses, which commonly function with just one merchant account, are frequently the ones who would have the greatest benefit from multiple accounts.

The trouble with just one merchant account is, unfortunately, things like chargebacks and fraud — occurrences that we can’t really control — may threaten our continued use of a single merchant account to process all payments. In other words, when we are running a high risk business with only one merchant account it’s basically like trying to move a marionette with just one string.

So who is recommended to obtain multiple merchant accounts?

• Businesses that deal with continuity payments, upsells, trial offers and memberships (like in some cases of nutraceutical sales) are strongly encouraged get themselves more than one account as a kind of safeguard for your transactions.

• Advertisers on radio and TV who manage long or short form DRTV or DR radio advertising have to be able to sustain a surge in business that a popular slot might produce.

• Sales propelled by affiliate marketing should be prepared with multiple accounts. Bad affiliate traffic makes them vulnerable. A lot of times customers who were initially coerced to try a service because they got a chance a winning something, decide to cancel their trial when they don’t win. This means a lot of chargebacks, which can be difficult to deal with all on one account.

• Those who want a larger processing volume can do so by weighing in the amount of money they have in their business bank account and using it to obtain an additional merchant account. This way, businesses are capable of processing every sale that comes along minus the barriers put up by the bank. Also, businesses can more easily spot the cause of troublesome affiliate traffic if they are using more than one affiliate network.

• Businesses who would like to divide their transactions according to the payment method like E-commerce opposed to mail order or telephone order are able to do so with two separate merchant accounts. Nevertheless, keep in mind that load balancing for the purpose of pushing cash flow to the account with the smallest chargebacks is unacceptable to regulators.

• If providing more specific billing descriptors to customers is a plus for a business they are able to make it happen by opening multiple merchant accounts. The billing descriptors tell your customer, on their credit card statement, where the charge came from. This helps them confirm the validity of the charge so misunderstandings, disputes, retrievals and chargebacks decrease.

In order to maintain than one merchant account a business needs to have an adequate technical foundation to sustain multiple accounts. A gateway that makes load-balancing possible is necessary as well. Moreover, a certain customer/technical support service plus experience with E-commerce is crucial for keeping up with more than one merchant account.

So don’t wait until you’re having chargeback problems with your one vitamin supplement merchant account. It will be much more difficult to get another account then, than now. Ultimate Merchant Providers is a good place to start for those businesses who are looking for a high risk merchant account.