It appears that we cannot go a full week without hearing about hackers stealing credit card numbers, pin numbers, and personal data of those who have used their credit and debit cards at large retailers. Now it seems that the fraudsters have hit a huge fast-food chain, Dairy Queen, which has 395 stores in the U.S. This can be really bad news for high risk merchant accounts.
High risk merchants are plagued with chargebacks. Dairy Queen is not what anyone would consider anything close to a high-end chain. This means that the accounts that were hacked were predominantly John Q. Public – the lower and middle classes. This fraud took two months to be discovered.
Cyber attackers are very slick. When the credit card industry plugs one hole, the crooks dig two more. MasterCard International has announced a brand new level of security for all users of their cards and all the merchants and processors who accept them. When card users are polled about their biggest concern, safety is always number one. With that in mind, MasterCard has introduced a program called SafetyNet.
One of the major benefits of SafetyNet is that it can stop fraud or attacks before it is noticed by humans. It will identify fraud in real-time and decline a transaction before any exposure takes place. For high risk merchant accounts, this means potential chargebacks will be declined at the point of sale and there will be no hiccups in the merchant chargeback percentage based on these potentially fraudulent charges.
According to MasterCard this new level of security and protection “monitors different channels and geographies, and provides the most appropriate level of support for each market and partner business, by using sophisticated algorithms.” Naturally, they are not going to give specifics that hackers can learn to break into the multi-level firewalls.
MasterCard also says “For the consumer, there are the security tools you can see including the EMV chip on your physical card or the SecureCode screen when at your online checkout. Through the launch of SafetyNet MasterCard is taking further steps to secure the payment data and transactions at both retailer and issuer.
So many high risk merchants have been going overseas to get a processor to approve their high risk merchant account. Conservative US processors and large banks will not touch the account. However, if a merchant can keep his chargebacks under a 3% threshold, there is a high risk specialist in the U.S. that can have you approved within 48 hours. The rates are nothing like the ones charged by overseas processors. And settlements can be in your checking account as soon as the next business day.
For those who already have a costly high risk merchant account or those wanting to open a new account, there are no application fees or setup fees. In addition, you do not have to have a personal Visa or MasterCard license.
To get approved for a high risk merchant account in as little as 48 hours, contact us today!
