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An unfortunate fact of being an online merchant and setting up an e-commerce merchant account is that you may need to be on the lookout for merchant account scams. Unfortunately, merchant account scams do exist, but you can avoid them by following these five simple steps. 

1)    Search smart. When you ran an internet search for “e-commerce merchant account” or “high risk merchant account” how many pages did you click through before selecting your site? Remember, sites that appear at the top of search engine searches tend to be frequently visited and highly rated, or meet certain criteria. Good merchant account providers can appear farther along in your search engine searches, but the farther you go from the top of the list, the more you increase your chance of doing business with a scammer.

2)    Also, since you’re already searching - search journals, articles, blogs, and association websites that deal with similar businesses to your own. If you can find information about your selected merchant account provider, the higher the chance of reliability.

3)    Take a look at that web address. Is your selected merchant account provider website hosted on a sub-domain? It takes money to purchase and maintain a domain name. A site with its own domain has a higher risk of being legitimate than a site with a domain such as www.yahoo.highriskaccountprovider.com.

4)    Always read all the available information on the merchant account provider’s website. This may sound obvious on the surface, but many merchants – especially high risk merchants, high volume merchants or multilevel marketing merchants in search of high risk merchant accounts may neglect to thoroughly peruse all the information in their excitement to find a merchant account provider. Observe the content of the website – are there articles and testimonials? Is there an FAQ section? Willingness to answer questions – and provide thorough and informative answers – is sign of good faith. Does the merchant account provider provide you with contact information on the site? Does that contact information appear to be legitimate?

5)    Ask for a full contract and full price list for review before signing on with a merchant account provider. Specifically ask about extra fees and charges, especially for high risk merchant accounts. Read the fine print carefully, even if there is a lot of it. Remember, a high risk merchant account rate should be significantly higher than a standard e-commerce merchant account rate – so be on the lookout for suspiciously low rates on these types of accounts – hidden fees could very well be involved.

High risk merchants or high volume merchants seeking creative merchant account solutions, look no further. High Risk Credit Card Processor can help you. High Risk Credit Card Processor represents over twenty different processing sources (United States-based banks, offshore banks, third party processors, ACH Processors, check drafts and more). High Risk Credit Card Processor has creative solutions to accommodate your business’s processing needs. Regardless of your business type or volume, we'll get your account approved quickly and keep it running smoothly without any volume caps. Let our staff of processing industry veterans find the merchant account solution that's right for you.