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. Acquirers 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 end up in the same underwriting queue for opposite reasons.
No, but it changes the file. A previous termination shows on the MATCH list, which acquirers check, and the reason code matters — excessive chargebacks reads differently from a merchant-application discrepancy. Tell us at the first call rather than at submission. 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 the acquirer, and any processor quoting you a single number across all verticals 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.
No. We are an ISO — an independent sales organisation. We prepare and place your file with acquiring banks and processors who make the credit decision and hold the liability. That is worth knowing because it means our incentive is to submit you where you will actually be approved and stay approved, not to talk a bank into a file that fails at the first review.
A completed application with ownership detail, government ID and a voided cheque 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 — licences, 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 MCC, volume, ticket size, chargeback history and the sponsor bank writing the account. 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; the acquirer's markup; a per-transaction fee; gateway fees; and monthly account fees. On top of that, restricted accounts often carry a reserve, which is not a cost but does affect your working capital. We quote all of it as a single 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 acquirer 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 that read 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.
Funding schedule is set per account by the sponsor bank 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 programmes with published thresholds on both count and ratio, and crossing one puts you into a remediation programme 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 a lot of 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 programme. That means monthly fines, a remediation plan, and a window to get back under. Accounts that do not recover get terminated and MATCH-listed, which affects your next application. This is why ratio monitoring with warning ahead of the threshold matters more than reporting after it.
Topic
Technical
Not necessarily. If your current gateway supports the acquirer we place you with, you keep it and we add the MID. Where a change is needed, the gateway offers drop-in cart integrations for the major platforms and a REST API for anything custom. We will tell you which case you are in before you commit.
Using hosted fields or hosted checkout keeps card data off your servers, which is what keeps you in the lightest SAQ category the integration allows. 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, and in restricted verticals you probably should. The gateway routes across multiple MIDs on rules you set — percentage split, card brand, currency, ticket size or product — with automatic failover. One integration, several accounts behind it, and the split changes without a deployment.
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.