Are you in need of supplemental credit card processing for your nutraceutical merchant account?

How Can I Get a Nutraceutical Merchant Account?

In theory, it’s pretty basic: fill out an application with a merchant account provider. Simple as that, right? Well, not so fast. When it comes to high risk merchant accounts, you’re kind of out there in this risky banks-won’t-touch-you area. So if the banks are backing off how do you get approved for payment processing?

You need to seek out a high risk merchant account provider that has bank sponsor relationships and the underwriting abilities to accept your nutraceutical business.

Since finding a nutraceutical merchant account provider with such abilities who is both experienced and reliable isn’t always easy – seeing as how the whole procedure depends upon if an underwriter can approve your nutraceutical merchant account – it’s often better to search for a few different credit card processors or sponsor banks to go through.

And that point begs the next question:

How Do I Go About Finding a High Risk Merchant Account for a Nutraceutical Company?

If you owned a low-risk business you’d have plenty of options, such as getting sponsored by federal banks like Wells Fargo or Chase. Unfortunately, those banks (and thus their processors) will not approve applications for nutraceutical merchant account because of the potential for regulatory and chargeback problems.

Here’s a breakdown for how to vet a quality payment processing company:

How Does Being High Risk Affect Your Chances of Getting a Nutraceutical Merchant Account?

The primary reason nutraceutical companies are considered to be high risk is because of the amount of chargebacks businesses in this industry incur. Why do nutraceutical merchant accounts get a lot of chargebacks?

Good question. Nutraceutical businesses typically get more chargebacks compared to an ordinary online business, and certainly get more than retails spaces and card present business. Mostly, it’s the chargebacks that require a nutra company to use a high risk nutraceutical merchant account rather than being able to qualify for a low risk account.

Here are a few reasons why…

• Nutraceutical businesses, particularly startups, assume that by providing a good product at a fair cost, and by being upfront with all of their terms, that all of their clients will be pleased. That is until the chargebacks start kicking in.


• Experienced nutra businesses know about the number of the chargeback management tools available and use them readily. However, managing chargebacks isn’t something that a lot of companies do from the get-go, therefore they generally find out about these management tools well after it’s too late to save the MID.


• Most nutraceutical companies utilize a membership, continuity, or recurring billing model. There is always some amount of customers who do not fully comprehend that they will be billed in the future, and when it shows up on their credit card statement, they start a chargeback claim.


• Additionally, some nutraceutical businesses claim or insinuate incredible results for their products, and when it does not wind up working the way the product was advertised to, it leaves the consumer feeling scammed. And because a nutraceutical merchant account may accompany smaller businesses, they generally don’t have a strong customer service call center setup to deal with disgruntled clients – and the more disgruntled the customers – the more they get hit with unnecessary chargebacks.