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 merchants the most popular, so in most cases cost effective, source is from a third party merchant account organization.

A high risk processing account is required by businesses that, when compared with ‘traditional’ goods/services business, was at a higher risk of:

Bankruptcy

Fraudulent Transactions

High quantity of sales

High rate of refunds

High rate of charge-backs

Other reasons a merchant account for pharmacy may be categorized like a high risk are:

Merchants Location – Some merchant account providers will not accept merchants from certain countries.

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

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

Due towards the high risk classification, most banks won’t provide business relationship to those in a high risk industry (such as adult entertainment, replica goods, pharmacy etc). Consequently some outside providers offer their services to both general merchants and heavy risk merchants.

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

When hoping for a high risk merchant account, there are many factors if you want to take note. Rates will be one of the most basic factors, refund policy includes fees for refunds and charge-backs, along with transaction fees, the discount rate and ongoing fees. Then you will need to adopt fraud protection, customer service and reporting available to you as a merchant.