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. |