How to Manage and Maintain your Merchant Account

Today over 75 percent of all customers use credit cards to make purchases, so only accepting cash or checks simply doesn’t make good business sense to any type of business but especially to a telephone or internet-based business.

 

A merchant account is a means of accepting credit cards and other forms of electronic payments from your customers. Merchant accounts are offered by banks and other financial institutions allowing businesses to accept cashless payments. Unfortunately more than 28% of all businesses are declined or turned down for a merchant account because they were not prepared.

 

The bad news is that being a telemarketing based business significantly increases the potential risk for banks to process for your business.  The good news is by reading this document and with a little advance planning, we can really stack the odds in your favor for being approved and minimize the chances of being denied.  At AVPS, we specialize in hard-to-place merchants and high risk merchants with chargeback problems.

If you follow the below advice, you’ll increase your chances of approval:

ü      Find out who is in charge of approving/underwriting merchant accounts and make an appointment with them. 

ü      Realize that it can be difficult for an outsider to understand your company’s business model. Provide any client testimonials, products, service literature, video clips, etc. When your products are actually seen your business is better understood. 

ü      If your product and mission statement are understood; it’s more likely a merchant account will be approved.

ü      AVPS can teach you how to promote your idea and business model to a bank for merchant account acceptance and at the same time educate you on the dos and don’ts of processing to minimize your risk and maximize your profits.

 

AVPS utilizes different banks that cater to different markets. AVPS has the experience and knowledge to match your company’s model with a bank that specializes in your type of business.

Furthermore once we assist you in obtaining a merchant account, you’ll need to keep in compliance with Visa and MasterCard’s rules and regulations. Again this is where AVPS’s experience pays off in a big way. AVPS has over twenty years in the credit card processing industry. We already know some of the pitfalls that can cause your merchant account to be revoked and we know how to avoid them.

If you have been denied a merchant account for any reason try and try again. Don’t give up. The above tips will increase your odds of gaining a merchant account, so revise your game plan and resubmit your application to AVPS.