Merchant accounts are needed for nearly every type of business. Unless you are a 100%
cash business, you need one of these accounts. Due to the overwhelming number of businesses
who utilize merchant account processing services, it seems like it would be easy to find an
account. For some it is, but for the majority of business owners in the USA it is not. For “high
risk” merchants, such as trial offer merchants, it can be difficult to find a merchant account.
Difficult, yes, but not impossible. Trial offer merchants for skin care have a high rate of
cancellations during the trial period, which looks bad on a merchant account record. Too many
of these cancellations can leave a processor scrambling to figure out what is wrong, when in
reality it is just part of the business. Many trail offer subscribers do not mean to subscribe, but
rather get the starter product, and nothing else. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but it
can leave you in a pickle if you are trying to keep a trial offer merchant account.
Another issue comes with negative billing. Negative billing is like a post-dated check,
where the payment is given, but not processed until a later date. Many times, these payments are
not processed, due to the customer cancelling the trial offer. Many processors have issues with
this for many reasons. The storage of this information is also tricky, thanks to the recent rash of
hackings. Any stored data is at risk, and these risks plus the fact that trial offer merchants are in
the “high risk” processing category leads to problems finding a processor.
It is possible, though. You need to make sure that you ask questions before signing on
with any processor. Regardless of their years of operation, or how high they are on the Google
search page, you still need to ask questions. Not all processors are created equally, and not all are
as experienced in the trial offer processing field as they claim to be. All “high risk” companies
are different, so be sure that the processor understands the uniqueness of your industry before
you sign on the dotted line.