Credit Card Processor for Dietary Supplements

Merchant Accounts and Payment Gateways for Vitamins &Dietary Supplements Industry. Vitamins, dietary and nutritional supplements industries are often seen as high-risk businesses. This is because the industry is vast, burgeoning and complex too. There are many supplements, nutritional ingredients which may be under the scanner of the FDA. It may be difficult for such businesses or start-ups in this industry to open merchant accounts with traditional banking systems or find payment gateways via third party payment processors like PayPal and financial intermediaries like Visa, Mastercard, Amex etc.,

Denied Shutoff Or Closed

Why are vitamin and nutritional supplements businesses are denied merchant accounts by traditional financial systems like Paypal, Square, Stripe and First Data? Though vitamins, weight loss and dietary supplements, are in great demand these days, this is still seen as a high-risk business. Why? This is a multi-billion industry which is yet to be regulated fully and there’s always an increasing risk of some products and ingredients being banned by the FDA. Hence most traditional banking methods outright reject merchant account applications and deny payment gateway setup for such businesses, more so if they are online merchants. And even when they do offer merchant accounts, it comes with difficult terms and conditions such as :

• High application fees
• Greater chargebacks and Risk for Loss
• Higher and more stringent discount rates, and cumbersome rolling reserve requirements.
• No offshore options.

Basically, the terms and conditions are quite difficult to adhere to. How does a vitamins and nutritional supplements business look for merchant accounts and what are the criteria that one must be looking at when opening such accounts?

Underwriting and Approval Criteria

The internet may have made it easy to set-up and run your health supplements business. The E-commerce possibilities for such businesses are many. And if you are looking for a reliable merchant account to help you in conducting your business smoothly, then do read on and find more.

• One of the important criteria you must look at is the ease of set-up of your merchant account with the payment processor. The application fee must be very reasonable as in the case of other businesses and better still if there is no charge of application fees. The processing of application must be quick, easy and transparent with no hidden costs.
• Look for someone with a friendly customer service, who caters to the complexity and risk-level involved in this line of business.
• If you wish to go the e-commerce way, then you will be requiring a virtual terminal which will make it easy for you to conduct all your online business operations. Apart from a virtual terminal, the merchant account setup must also give you the ability to do any online commercial transaction without a retail/ card present signature.
• Chargebacks are inevitable in high-risk businesses and any merchant account with reasonable terms and conditions understands this. These chargebacks must not entail higher rates and fees.
• The fees and rates charged must be reasonable and competitively priced.

Rates and Transaction Fees. Rolling Reserves

Apart from the fees and rates look for a merchant account that does not have a very stringent rolling reserves requirement. Rolling reserves are mainly required by banks to manage the risk of losses inherent in such businesses. A simple buffer is good, but it must not be a constraint to the smooth operation of the business. Being in a high-risk business sometimes may land you in a position where your bank may stop processing your payments and this could stop all your business transactions. Therefore, look for someone who provides you with a merchant account that allows multiple underwriting banks. It is imperative for a business to ease out and diversify the methods of payments by the customers. Irrespective of the type of merchant account you hold, a business must be able to accept different credit cards such as the Visa, Mastercard, Amex etc.,

These are some of the essential criteria one must look for when setting up a merchant account. It also helps to take into consideration the following key points too. When opening merchant accounts for high-risk businesses, the concerned payment processors also take into account whether the concerned party is a start-up in this line or an established player. Most often rates and fees vary taking this factor into consideration. A domestic business set-up may have lesser rates when compared to an offshore business, because the risk levels are lesser in the former when compared to the latter.

Getting Approved a High Risk Merchant Account

We hope to have given enough clarity on this subject. We have enough experience in assisting high-risk businesses to open and manage merchant accounts. We have solutions for the manybottle-necks associated with the opening of merchant accounts for businesses which deal in vitamins and other health supplements.If you wish to get in touch with us you can contact our customer service team. We have a very knowledgeable and responsive customer service team who can assist you with the setting up of a merchant account and clarify all your doubts and queries.