While selling coins in a brick-and-mortar venue poses some risk, such as theft and robbery, selling coins online is no different: risks abound and you might find you need a high risk merchant account for selling coins online. Although the thieves and robbers you come across online may not threaten you with guns or break into your shop during the night, they can put your online coin selling business at risk just the same. Most significantly, the activities of the scammers who sometimes target online coin selling businesses may make it difficult for you to secure a merchant account via traditional means, and this can mean a loss of profit for your business.
Thieves don’t always wear masks
There are a variety of scams to which an online coin selling business may fall prey and the scammers can be very clever. As is often the case with scams, you may not realize you are being scammed until it is too late. In fact, you may not see it coming at all. A favored strategy of coin sales business scammers is to establish trust with a merchant who deals in online coin sales, buy a great amount of coins, and then instigate chargebacks after the coins are delivered. When this happens, it costs the bank that has supplied the coin selling business a merchant account money. And banks don’t like to lose money. That’s why they often outright deny a merchant account to a business that sells coins online – they’ve been burned in the past. The way banks see it, online coins sales transactions carry the risk of a high amount of chargebacks and fraud, and so these businesses are automatically labeled as “high-risk” when it comes to providing merchant accounts for credit card processing.
Protecting Yourself
There are ways to protect yourself should unwarranted chargebacks occur. You should take the following steps with each transaction. Having proper documentation in place will help you if a chargeback issue arises and you need to supply a “paper trail” to the bank underwriting a merchant account.
- Copy of the item description. Have this description in place with every transaction. The type of coin, its year, any defects or flaws – these all need to be noted in a thorough description of the coin being sold.
- Terms of the sale. Carefully document the terms of the sale, including any limitation of liability and warranties. It helps to have these terms of sales posted on your website.
- Online tracking. Have an online tracking system in place that carefully tracks and documents each stage of the transaction, from point of sale to receipt of goods.
- A signature for high-amount transactions. Require a signature for all transactions over a certain amount. The amount you select for the signature is up to you; the most important aspect is to have an actual signature on file to be able to present to the merchant account provider.
These practices will help to protect your online coin sales business should a credit card dispute or chargeback occur. However, even with all of these practices in place, banks may still be unwilling to offer you a direct merchant account.
What else can you do?
Customers expect to be able to pay using credit cards, so not accepting credit cards is out of the question if you want your online coin selling business to be a success. You need a reliable and affordable merchant account that has the ability to accept transactions at all times, around the clock. Additionally, you want a merchant account that operates on terms that are equitable to your business to maximize your profits. A high risk merchant account is the best solution.
Contact us
If bankers have denied your online coin selling business a merchant account, your next step is apply for a high risk merchant account. This is where we can help. We have been in the Merchant Account Industry since 1995. We can help get your business a merchant account that can consistently accept credit card payments through your website so you don’t lose sales.
Comments are closed.