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 providers for online pharmacy account; a bank, or a third party provider. For online merchants the most popular, plus most cases cost effective, source is from one third party merchant account issuer.

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

Bankruptcy

Fraudulent Transactions

High volume of sales

High rate of refunds

High rate of charge-backs

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

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

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

Merchant Credit record – Some providers will not accept merchants with poor or no credit track record.

Due towards high risk classification, most banks will not provide your free account to those in a perilous industry (such as adult entertainment, replica goods, pharmacy etc). Therefore some outside providers offer their services to both general merchants and high risk merchants.

Merchant account providers of developed to service riskly merchants will generally provide to the next stage of fraud protection, so that you can decrease the cost their merchants incur. However, in order to cover the advanced of risk, rates for a high risk merchant account will always be higher than their lower risk counter-parts.

When looking for high risk merchant account, there are a number of factors take into account. Rates will be one of the biggest factors, and this includes fees for refunds and charge-backs, along with transaction fees, the discount rate and recurring fees. You will need to look into fraud protection, customer service and reporting available to you as a merchant.