At IPP, we are committed to innovation and providing excellent service to our merchants. We believe that all merchants in high risk industries deserve high-quality payment processing solutions to run and scale their businesses. Breaking down our relationship with merchants into three key steps allows us to optimize these solutions.
Why High Risk Businesses Get Denied a Merchant Account?
As many people in the industry are aware, the process of ensuring that a high risk merchant business acquires bank lines to operate and process their payments can be unpredictable and stressful. The merchant account process involves developing a merchant application package that is not typically necessary in the traditional point-of-sale, card-present (CP) arena. This is primarily because in the CP arena, as validation of the credit or debit card takes place at the point of sale through the terminal, attempting chargebacks is avoided.
However, in the card-not-present (CNP) space, there is no guarantee that the consumer is the card owner making the transaction. Because of this issue and the risks that come with processing payments for high risk businesses, banks are hesitant to provide services to these businesses. Nevertheless, we have become experts in the various steps involved in merchant acquiring and onboarding so that we can provide these services to businesses in high risk industries.
How Rapid Application Processing Helps You Get a High Risk Merchant Account Fast?
Our regimented onboarding process, which we call Rapid Application Processing (RAP), allows us to onboard much faster, more efficiently, and more comprehensively than any other firm in the industry. Our resources and expertise mean that we can onboard high risk merchants in the least invasive way possible, allowing merchants to continue to focus on running and scaling their businesses.
Rapid Application Process for High Risk Merchant
Our RAP process involves three regimented steps that allow us to assess a high risk merchant and approve them into our payments network.

Step 1: High Risk Merchant Evaluation
The first step is merchant evaluation which involves determining whether the merchant in question is appropriate for our services. This pre-application process is generic as we are not sure at this time with which acquiring bank a merchant should be paired. This process entails producing bank statements, processing statements detailing the company’s value, ‘know your client (KYC) documentation, merchant’s passport, driver’s license, and utility bills verifying identification. Corporate documents, sales tax certificates, and other pertinent financial statements about the merchant are also required.
This process may appear to involve a considerable amount of time and stress in producing the required documents. We know there is a tendency for merchants to avoid gathering this information despite their importance in gaining approval for payment processing and instead focus on more critical aspects of running their business, like the day-to-day operations. However, because we know this is a cumbersome process, we have set up an automated process to gather the information necessary to complete this and each subsequent step, in conjunction with our dedicated team of professionals who alleviate the problems and the stress that the process commonly involves. We can approve and onboard merchants for high risk processing with the same level of detail and quality faster than any other firm in the high risk space. This allows merchants to accept payments and continue to operate their business with peace of mind.
Step 2: Onboarding mid-management:
After gathering all the required documentation, we start creating an underwriting score for each merchant. This process can be overwhelming, especially for high risk merchant accounts, because aggregate payment processors or traditional banks have declined those merchants. Furthermore, merchants like payday lenders, financiers, and reputational risks like cannabis retailers, are easily denied for a high risk merchant account.
However, our experts with years of experience can evaluate your business to improve the best business practices. So, you have a higher chance of the acquired approval rate. Our team will approach the right banks and get pre-approval with the best fit based on your length of time in business, merchant processing history, bank account working, and business type. Especially, we will represent your business to work directly with the banks and answer any questions they may have. Therefore, you can spend your time and energy on other important things.
After the bank accepts the application, we will instantaneously gateway boarding (NMI, Authorite.net, etc.) and establish the payment gateway for customers.
Step 3: Agent/Bank support and Much More:
Our service does not end when you get a merchant account and payment gateway. We also provide 24/7 365 backend customer support with a real person, including online chat, phone/email support, and problem resolution. They will help you answer every question from your customers. Furthermore, we have the technology to identify fraud and prevent it from happening by identifying mismatched addresses, abnormal quantity, or dollar value being ordered. We also exclude or include specific situations such as IP, Customer Info, Payment Method, or Country. Besides, we provide chargeback and dispute solutions for customers. Whenever a merchant gets a chargeback, our system analyzes the chargeback to identify who opened it.
Furthermore, we also provide a customized response for the merchant based on the chargeback reason, fraud analysis, fulfillment status, and more. The merchant will be notified when the answer is ready. They’ll be able to quickly copy the response, download relevant screenshots (like fraud analysis and tracking page), and submit the chargeback response. Therefore, you have a higher chance of winning the chargeback. Finally, we will update your account status and create an online report to notify you of any abnormal transaction.
If you are an agent looking to place high risk businesses or you are a high risk merchant yourself, please contact us at (678) 901-4953 or at sales@intl-payments.com so that we can assist in all areas of high-risk payment processing.