Merchant accounts are required in order for a business to accept credit card payments. As a merchant, there are two places you can obtain a merchant account; a bank, or a third party provider. For online pharmacy merchant services merchants the most popular, and in most cases cost effective, source is from a 3rd party merchant account offerer.

A high risk credit card merchant account is required by businesses that, when compared together with ‘traditional’ goods/services business, have reached a higher risk of:

Bankruptcy

Fraudulent Transactions

High amount of sales

High rate of refunds

High rate of charge-backs

Other reasons a merchant may be categorized being a high risk are:

Merchants Location – Some merchant account providers won’t accept merchants from certain countries.

The Product/Service the merchant sells is against the law in some jurisdictions.

Merchant Credit record – Some providers won’t accept merchants with poor or no credit foundation.

Due into the high risk classification, most banks won’t provide a forex account to those who are in a riskly industry (such as adult entertainment, replica goods, pharmacy etc). For this reason some outside providers offer their services to both general merchants and high risk merchants.

Merchant account providers that have been developed to service perilous merchants will probably provide to the next stage of fraud protection, you will find that decrease charge their merchants incur. However, in order to cover the level up of risk, rates for just about any high risk merchant account will be higher than their lower risk counter-parts.

When purchasing a high risk merchant account, there many factors to be take into consideration. Rates will be one of the biggest factors, like includes fees for refunds and charge-backs, along with transaction fees, the discount rate and recurring fees. You’ll need to take into account fraud protection, customer service and reporting available a person as a merchant.