OWNING MANY NUTRACEUTICAL MERCHANT ACCOUNTS

Initially, when a merchant decides to sign up for a merchant account, he will not know much about merchant accounts because an in depth understanding of such an account can be obtained only after using and experiencing it for a specified period of time. After getting comfortable with various aspects of the account, it is a sound idea to sign up for another account. At the first thought, this idea will mean a redundancy is created since a single account by itself can offer you the required functionality. Also, the second question would be with respect to the fees and charges since the merchant has to pay twice the fees. But the fact is that the merchant will end up paying much lesser than what he thought.

Non-qualified and mid-qualified processing surcharges will be prevented. The merchant account can be either ‘card present’ or ‘card not present’ type. Card present accounts require the presence of both the credit card and the customer at the same time. An example of this account type is retail stores. Card not present accounts are to be used in situations when the card and the customer are both not available. This is related to E-commerce business.

Now it must be clear how holding these two different cards can be beneficial in different situations functionally. The monetary benefits can be explained as under – in case a merchant uses a card present account for a card not present transaction. This will result in a high discount rate. Surcharges that are charged are also high. For overcoming loss of money, the account type and the transaction type must match with each other.

To allay the fears of small time merchants with respect to doubling of charges, consider using the same account provider for the accounts. This way, it becomes easier to negotiate since the account provider will be willing to reduce fixed fees considering the fact that the two accounts are his company’s.

Anyway, you should also know the disadvantages associated with such a decision. Consider the rare case of service disruption due to some temporary technical issue. In such a situation, the processing of credit card is stalled since both the accounts are held with the same account provider. This situation should not occur when an important transaction is in progress, but there is no guarantee that such a thing can never happen.

Such untimely situations can be avoided when different accounts are associated with different account providers. You need to compare the costs associated with maintaining such accounts with the loss that can be incurred as a result of downtimes. This will depend on the type of your business and how critical and time sensitive the transactions are. For making this decision, it is advisable to jot down the pattern that service disruptions follow and then make the appropriate decision.

It is generally advisable to own two different merchant accounts for long term benefits. The decision to maintain the accounts with the same or different account provider will take some time. Contact one of our helpful account representatives to assist you in the setup of a high risk merchant account or offshore merchant account for a high risk merchant.