If you’ve been rejected by a merchant account provider, you’ll know how frustrating it can be. You want to be able to accept payments from your customers, but you can’t because your banking and finance solutions just aren’t in place.
If you find yourself in this position, what can you do? What’s the best advice for businesses that have been rejected by conventional merchant banking providers?
Check your industry blacklist
One of the first things you’ll want to do is check whether your industry is on a blacklist. Some payment processors simply won’t work with you if you’re part of a specific vertical. The MasterCard Alert to Control High Risk Merchants list (formerly called the Terminated Merchant File, or TMF) is the shared industry blacklist. Processes will often shut you down if you appear on this.
The good news is that you can sometimes find a workaround by going to merchants who work in your industry, for example iGaming payment solutions from North are a good option for online casinos.
Bring in a financially strong cosigner
Another option is to bring in a financially strong cosigner. Small businesses and new startups typically rely on credit to get their companies off the ground. That’s why merchants will sometimes reject their applications, leading to instant denial. The best way to deal with this is to deepen your financial track record. If your personal credit score is holding you back, look for ways to improve it.
- Pay down your existing debts.
- Pay your obligatory utilities and loan payments every month on time.
Keep doing this for a few months until you see your credit score slowly tick up.
Size your processing projections accurately
Many companies missize their processing projections and estimated monthly volumes. Often this is because of optimism in the early days of a business. A lot of entrepreneurs believe that they’re going to be highly successful very quickly.
The fix is to review your numbers and only use data-backed statistics. Don’t tell merchant account providers that you can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month if you are only bringing in $500 a month right now.
You can also get in touch with their customer onboarding team by phone and tell them more about your situation. Sometimes they’ll be able to manually approve you once they have the right financial details about your company.
Audit your website
On top of this, it’s a good idea to audit your website. Sometimes you can be rejected by merchant banking because of a simple compliance error. For example, let’s say that an underwriter visits your website and can’t find a refund policy. In this case, they might reject you just because of this.
To sort out this problem, work with an accountant who understands the information you need to provide to merchant banking services in order to gain their approval. Make sure you have a strict document checklist in place and that all of your public-facing touchpoints appear compliant from the outset.
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