How to Secure Cheapest Rates

Rates for merchant account services for high-risk industries, a variety of factors determine how much it will cost to process your customers credit cards. There variety of factors that come to place including such factors as business type, new or established business, are you going with a domestic solution or an offshore credit card processing bank. Fortunately we help companies, owners and operators of small businesses get set up to take credit cards from their clients and customer base. This includes retailers and Internet commerce websites that run off shopping cart systems. If you are an adult business, he porn company, travel business work at a telemarketing service, offer outbound telemarketing, have high transaction rates or high chargebacks you are likely qualified a designated as a high risk account. Or if you are in the collection  agency services in debt repair or credit repair, or say for example you are a tobacco shop or cigarette retailer, or cigar shop or sell products and services that are explicit or erotica nature you will also be classified as a high risk company and need a provider that is friendly and understanding of your business needs. There are many types of other companies that are classified in this way including Moto merchant accounts that process credit cards over the phone or through the mail order catalogs. If you process large transaction amounts at a time through your billing or payment gateway service your account may be flagged for further review and risk assessment.

Negotiating

New Small Business Owners: When you negotiate your credit card processing rate first keep in mind some important issues such as your processing history. If you are a new business you are going to have difficulty negotiating a cheap merchant account rate that is significantly lower then competiting services. This is because without any history you have no negotiating leverage. It will be difficult enough to find a bank willing to process your industry let alone be able to negotiate the cheapest rates. So unfortunately as a new business your options will be limited. Just as if you had no credit history you would find few banks willing to give you a loan at the cheapest rates, credit card processing companies work in a similar way without any history, without any transaction history it will be difficult for you to negotiate the best rate possible. And if and when you are approved for a merchant account by us, if you are a high risk hard to place business you may just as well as be happy that you are approved! So if and when you are approved you may be better off focusing on your business and passing on the higher transaction costs to your customers and work on growing revenues to offset the fees and costs associated with accepting credit cards

Established Companies: If you are an established company currently processing with another merchant account provider you will be able to negotiate cheaper rates in all likelihood. Especially if you have a sound business model and your chargebacks are low, the odds and negotiating power will be in your favor to secure the cheapest merchant account rates for high risk companies. When you get to the negotiating table get your documentation order first. Get your processing statements out and review and try to understand what you're paying for on your statement. For example look at monthly fees, statement fees, annual fees, and PCI compliance fees. Some of these fees can be lowered or eliminated on your new merchant processing bank. Then the biggest review will be your transaction rates, these rates are what the processing company makes its profitability. Merchant processing companies typically are charged fixed rates from Visa and MasterCard and make a profit by reselling these transaction rates to you with some percentage points added on. As a high-risk company you have to understand to that is more risk involved with underwriting your business therefore the bank that is assuming the risk and liability has to have more revenue and profitability to cover for any potential losses that may occur from your company. This is just sound business practices that you employ at your own company to have some reserves in case of chargebacks, bankruptcies or other problems that arise in banking services. So you can negotiate a few tenths of a percent in most cases if your rate is over below. If the rate gets cheaper and cheaper realize that banks need to cut costs elsewhere to make up for the loss in revenue. You may wind up with poor services, in return for such a low rate. As the old saying goes you get what you pay for. If a merchant bank is giving out extremely low rates you maybe saving a few dollars in the near term by wind up with poor service and poor results from the company in the long term

Dropped Merchants

We see a frequent pattern in the industry where merchants, companies sign up to a particular credit card processing company.Those companies may be advertising heavily on the Internet and are well known brands that a business owner might recognize. However as we know from the past few years some banks employ bad practices in poor application approval processes. They may approve you only to drop you or decline you a few months later after your already processing. They then hold onto your funds leaving you high and dry without a reliable secure merchant account company to process your transactions. So be wary of heavily marketed merchant account companies who list low unrealistic rates to draw you in only too find yourself in a difficult situation weeks or months later or even years later. We have seen many small business owners and operators come to us after processing with another company for years and suddenly dropped with no notice. It could be that the particular bank is simply getting out of particular industry that you and your small business fall under. It is an unfortunate situation. Fortunately we have solutions and as cheap as possible rates as we can offer for small business companies like yourself. To get the process started simply call us or email us and speak with an agent who is friendly and understanding of your industry needs.