FAQ
Questions merchants actually ask.
Including the ones with an uncomfortable answer. Where the honest response is that a number varies or has not been confirmed, that is what it says.
Topic
Getting approved
Not the thing you sell, most of the time. Processors price the probability that money flows backwards — through chargebacks, refunds or regulatory action. Long delivery windows, subscription billing, large tickets, cross-border traffic and regulated products all raise that probability. A firearms retailer with a 0.1% dispute ratio is restricted on policy; a furniture retailer with a twelve-week lead time is restricted on exposure. Both get declined by mainstream platforms for opposite reasons.
The acquiring bank underwrites you; we do not pretend otherwise. What we do is prepare the file, present it to the acquiring partner that writes your category, put the bank's terms in front of you before you sign, and then run the platform you use every day — checkout, API, dashboard, reporting and support. Where a category needs a specialist acquirer, we tell you which path you are on before you send a single document.
No, but it changes the file. A previous termination shows on the MATCH list, which we check, and the reason code matters — excessive chargebacks reads differently from an application discrepancy. Tell us on the first call rather than at underwriting. A file that discloses a MATCH listing and explains it is workable; one that hides it and is discovered is not.
It depends on the vertical and on how complete your file is when it arrives, and any processor quoting a single number across every category is quoting a marketing figure. What we will tell you on the first call is the realistic range for your specific category, and what in your file is likely to be the long pole.
A completed application with ownership detail, government ID and a voided check or bank letter, three to six months of processing statements if you have them, recent bank statements, and the compliance documents specific to your vertical — licenses, lab certificates, registrations. You get the whole list at the start rather than one item at a time.
Topic
Pricing and terms
Because any rate we published would be wrong for most of the people reading it. Restricted-vertical pricing is set per merchant against your category, volume, ticket size and chargeback history. A headline percentage would anchor you on a number your category will not be offered, and we would rather show you nothing than show you that.
Interchange, which is set by the card networks and is the largest component; our platform markup, which is where restricted-vertical pricing differs from standard; a per-transaction fee; and monthly account fees. Restricted accounts also carry a reserve, which is not a cost but does affect working capital. We quote all of it as one effective rate against your real volume, so you can compare it to what you pay now.
Term length and any early termination provision are stated in the agreement you sign, and we will point at that clause before you sign rather than after. Ask any processor for the termination clause specifically — it is the single most informative paragraph in a merchant agreement.
Topic
Reserves and funding
A percentage of each batch that the acquiring bank holds and releases on a schedule once it has aged past the reserve term. It is your money, held as collateral against future chargebacks, and it is returned less anything charged against it. It is not a fee. There is a full explanation with a worked month-by-month example on the reserves page.
Set at underwriting against your vertical, processing history, chargeback ratio and delivery timeline. We do not publish a rate because the honest answer varies from none to substantial across the businesses reading this page. What we commit to is telling you the rate, the term, the release schedule and the conditions for changing any of them before you sign.
Your funding schedule is set per account and stated in your agreement. Restricted accounts frequently fund on a delay relative to standard-risk ones. You will see the schedule before signature.
Topic
Chargebacks
The card brands run monitoring programs with published thresholds on both count and ratio, and crossing one puts you into a remediation program with fines and a timetable. The operational answer is that you want to be far enough below the threshold that a bad month does not breach it — not sitting just underneath it.
Some of them. Pre-dispute alerts let you refund a transaction before it becomes a chargeback, which protects your ratio even though you still lose the sale. Clear descriptors and a findable cancellation path prevent a large share of the rest, because many disputes are recognition failures rather than fraud. The remainder get fought with evidence, and the win rate there depends on the reason code.
You enter the relevant brand's monitoring program — monthly fines, a remediation plan, and a window to get back under. Because our residual depends on your account staying open, we work the plan with you rather than watching from a distance. Accounts that cannot recover are offboarded and MATCH-listed, which affects your next application anywhere. This is why ratio monitoring with warning ahead of the threshold matters more than reporting after it.
Topic
Technical
Three ways. Hosted checkout, which most merchants use and which needs no code. Plugins for the major carts. Or a documented REST API with webhooks, for anything custom. Hosted fields keep card data off your servers in every option, which is what keeps your PCI scope small.
Using hosted checkout or hosted fields keeps card data off your servers, which puts you in the lightest SAQ category. If you post card data directly from your own form, your scope is larger. Either way you complete an annual self-assessment; we tell you which one applies to your integration rather than leaving you to guess.
Yes. Separate sub-accounts, each with its own descriptor and reporting, under one login and one relationship. Volume can be routed between them by product, brand or ticket size, and the split changes in the dashboard rather than in your code.
Topic
Platforms
Yes. Sellers apply inside your product through a hosted flow or your own API integration. Each receives its own merchant account through our acquiring partner, with its own agreement, terms sheet, descriptor and reporting, and your platform sees every account on its own line.
The acquiring bank does, from data collected inside your onboarding flow. Each seller gets its own merchant account, underwritten and carried by the bank. Your platform owns the product experience and earns a revenue share on each account it brings; it does not become a compliance department and it does not hold chargeback liability.
Each seller settles to its own account. Payouts to vendors, affiliates and your platform fee run as ACH originations from the platform where the acquiring program supports it, on a schedule you set, and every recipient reconciles to its own ledger.
You hear it at onboarding, before documents. If a specialist acquirer writes the category the seller can be boarded there and it still reports into your platform view. If nobody writes it, the seller hears that from us rather than three weeks later.
Still not answered?
Ask directly. If the answer is that it depends, we will tell you what it depends on rather than giving you a number that sounds better.