Continuity Billing & Negative Option Merchant Accounts

Continuity Billing & Negative Option Billing Merchant Accounts

Merchants who offer subscription services often use continuity billing models or negative option billing in an attempt to build a loyal customer base. While these practices work for many businesses, they also put merchants at a higher risk for chargebacks, and when chargebacks occur too frequently, merchants leave themselves vulnerable to account closures or frozen assets, which means they’re unable to continue processing payments and therefore, unable to make money.

Unfortunately, because of the risk that recurring billing, subscription billing, and automatic billing poses to payment processors, merchants who utilize these business models have been deemed high-risk and therefore, are usually unable to obtain processing accounts from traditional banks and mainstream payment processing companies. The only hope many of these merchants have of obtaining a payment processing account is by working with a processor that offers high-risk merchant accounts. While there are many payment processors that cater to high-risk merchants, only PayDiverse offers a full range of industry-leading account features at low rates that help high-risk merchants reduce chargeback ratios and keep their business operating smoothly.

High-Risk Merchant Accounts for Merchants Who Use Negative Option and Recurring Billing

At PayDiverse, we understand the needs of high-risk merchants better than anyone. We offer all of our account holders access to a wide range of industry-leading account features that help merchants protect themselves from unwarranted chargebacks and fraud, and ultimately protect their bottom line.

Real-time Chargeback Alerts and Chargeback Dispute Support

Chargebacks occur when a customer disputes a charge on their credit or debit account. Generally, once the customer’s credit card issuer receives the dispute, they reverse the charge with the payment processor who then needs to obtain the funds from the merchant. If the merchant doesn’t have the funds available in their account, the payment processor or processing bank is then left covering the charge. This is the reason that merchants who are susceptible to chargebacks are typically deemed high-risk.

Using a subscription billing or automatic billing agreement to obtain payments from customers often results in a high volume of chargebacks. That’s because customers often forget that they’ve agreed to a recurring billing cycle and request a reversal of charges, or they haven’t read or fully understood the terms they agreed to when signing up for a product or service. In many cases, merchants don’t provide customers with enough information to easily request a refund or cancel their billing agreement. This leads to customers requesting a chargeback from their issuing bank or credit card company. In the event that chargebacks occur too frequently, payment processors or their supporting banks may choose to freeze a merchant’s assets or close their account altogether.

At PayDiverse, we make it simple for merchants to keep chargeback ratios low. Our real-time chargeback alerts notify merchants as soon as a chargeback has been initiated on their account. This gives merchants the opportunity to provide evidence to their bank or payment processor that the customer authorized the transaction. Disputing chargebacks is the best method for protecting merchants from unwarranted chargebacks, and PayDiverse works hard to support merchants throughout this process.

Keeping Chargeback Ratios Low and Reducing Exposure with Multi-Bank Processing

Another method PayDiverse employs to assist merchants in maintaining low chargeback ratios is processing payments across a small network of supporting banks. Instead of simply using a single supporting bank to process payments, PayDiverse ensures that each merchant has a minimum of four banks who are willing to work with merchants who utilize automatic billing, recurring billing, or negative option billing. For every merchant, we alternate payments across this network in order to reduce the risk of exposure and keep chargebacks as low as possible.

While this method works well to reduce exposure, there are some instances where high chargeback ratios simply cannot be avoided. In the event that this occurs and a supporting bank freezes or closes a merchant account, each merchant has a minimum of three backup banks available to continue processing their payments, meaning their sales and business operations will remain unaffected.

Getting Started With PayDiverse

If your business has been unable to obtain an affordable payment processing account with a traditional bank or payment processor, or if you’ve experienced inconvenient account closures in the past due to your subscription billing model, PayDiverse can help.

Our merchant accounts come fully loaded with an array of convenient features that have been developed specifically for high-risk merchants, including:

• Chargeback Alerts and Dispute Support
• Multi-Bank Processing
• Offshore Banking Solutions
• Award-Winning iSpy Fraud Prevention Software
• Secure Payment Gateway
• ACH/E-check Processing
• Pinless Debit
• 24/7 Support
• Online Merchant Portal

We approve 98% of applicants and make it easy to start processing credit and debit card payments fast. To get started with PayDiverse, simply complete and digitally sign our online application and send it in along with your supporting documents. We’ll let you know if we’re able to approve you within about 24 hours.

Upon approval, you’ll be set up with your secure payment gateway and all of PayDiverse’s services within 48 hours so you can start billing and processing payments right away.