If you are an owner of a sports forecasting website, you might already realized that acquiring a merchant payment processor for your business is quite complex in contrast to other businesses. If you are wondering why, it’s because these account providers does not entertain sports forecasting high risk merchant accounts. For that reason, most credit card processors and banks don’t naturally want to negotiate with these businesses. The reason why is because sports forecasting high risk merchant accounts are under the gambling industry.
Since the sports forecasting business involves gambling, most payment providers will commonly not want to collaborate with them. If you are a merchant under this industry, you will first need to obtain a sports forecasting high-risk merchant account. Acquiring one will enable to process payments and transactions. For merchants in this business, there are high-risk domestic and offshore options that can handle transactions without any problem.
Domestic & Offshore High-risk Merchant Account
To acquire a domestic high-risk merchant account, a sports forecasting merchant must first present their social security number. Domestic high-risk merchant accounts are commonly fit for start-up sports forecasting businesses. Offshore processors and banks aren’t as ideal since they find start-up sports forecasting merchants to be uninteresting. Some offshore payment providers have even stopped considering accounts with less than $50,000 monthly processing revenue. Because of this, the only realistic option for start-up merchants is a domestic high-risk merchant account.
The Process
If you are a sports forecasting merchant who intends to obtain either two of the said high-risk merchant accounts, you should:
- First, prepare your application for your chosen banks or payment processors.
- An underwriter will be requiring you to have a fully-functional website.
- The member’s area is required to be accessible by your bank. They will make sure that everything is functional and that the site is available and is constantly up-to-date.
- After everything has been settled and approved, Applying sports forecasting businesses will be approved with high-risk sports forecasting merchant account.
- Approval and set-up are will cover a maximum seven (7) days.
Among the two, sports forecasting businesses are more likely leaning towards domestic merchant high-risk accounts since it is a more reliable and direct option. It also has the benefit of not having to go through any payment aggregator. Additionally, a domestic high-risk merchant account will provide the merchant with their own personal account.
Choose Wisely
It makes sense for sports forecasting businesses to give their customers a variety of payment processing options. Having multiple options will increase their trust value, resulting in them receiving more orders on a consistent basis. If updated regularly, the transactions of these sports forecasting businesses are not even considered as high-risk.
However, the reason why most banks still find these businesses as high-risk is because their industry is connected with gambling. For that reason, sports forecasting businesses should carefully choose an ideal high-risk processor that can provide high-quality processing solutions. If you are managing a sports forecasting business, you should understand that your business is among the high-risk businesses. You should make the extra effort in landing a legit processor that can help process your payments.