What are the reasons why a merchant is considered as “High Risk”?
The institutions conducting the underwriting as well as the card platforms can be “subjective” versus being “objective” in their reasoning for classifying a merchant as a High Risk. This means that the reasons can be broad and vary immensely from acquirer to acquirer. For the sake of this conversation, I have listed the top five reasons below.
- You are part of an industry, or vertical, that has unfortunately gained a bad reputation.
- You have no or extraordinarily little processing history. A start-up for example.
- You have expensive items, or commonly referred to as “High Ticket” items, along with high monthly processing volumes.
- When assigned high buy rates, or MDR, accompanied with a mandatory high rolling reserve.
- You are threatened with account termination.
