Bad Credit Merchant Accounts

Today's businesses need to keep up with their competitors more than ever. This means being in front of your customers with the right product at the right time with a seamless cart-to-payment checkout process. Losing a sale because of a lackluster payment experience is huge. According to research by Xero1, 86% of small business owners invest in technology, but only 32% invest in mobile payment acceptance.

For high-risk eCommerce merchants, it's even more crucial to capture every sale. But how can you process payments fast enough to keep customers happy and not heading to your competitor's site?

With Authorize.net, a subsidiary of Visa.

What is Authorize.net?

Visa's payment gateway tool, Authorize.net, offers high-risk eCommerce businesses all the tools needed to succeed. Authorize.net lets businesses accept payments however they choose for the fastest, most streamlined payments process.

In a traditional payments ecosystem, authorization can be slow and at the mercy of bandwidth and processors. The processing power of the Authorize.net high-risk payment gateway approves or declines a sale within seconds — this technology knows the moment credit card data is entered whether to approve or deny the transaction.

This is especially important for eCommerce merchants and fraud prevention because every transaction is card-not-present. For high-risk merchants, this is even more important — card-not-present transactions contribute to higher chargeback ratios. With the cost of chargebacks expected to climb to over 117 B USD by 2023 (merchants' share: 79 B USD), a high chargeback ratio can get a business labeled high-risk even if it isn't in a high-risk industry.

Struggling to find a merchant account because you're considered high-risk? Reach out to us, and we can help.

What are some benefits of Authorize.net?

Authorize.net was designed with high-risk businesses in mind. High-risk businesses have different needs than a typical merchant. For instance, businesses classified as high-risk require payment processing tools that offer increased insights into transactions. Signing into Authorize.net offers a quick glance for business owners to:

• Track orders
• Manage delivery
• View payments
• See inventory levels

Returning customers enjoy an even faster checkout process thanks to Authorize.net's safe payment storage. For products or services customers buy on a monthly basis, such as subscriptions, store owners can set up recurring billing within the dashboard. High-risk merchants can integrate Authorize.net with their current eCommerce website, such as BigCommerce (more on that below). Integrations are fast and easy, thanks to the use of an API, or application programming interface — which just means a simple way to connect things.

Accept international payments with Authorize.net

No matter where you or your customers are in the world, Authorize.net can process your customers' credit card payments, which lets you open your store to a whole new audience. You can accept payments in any currency on your website, and if you opt for the Authorize.net credit card reader, you can even process payments in a physical store, at a trade show, flea market, or anywhere you sell to your customers. You benefit from the protection of Authorize.net's instant approve or decline functionality while also accepting multiple payment methods.

How does Authorize.net payment gateway work?

Authorize.net makes high-risk payment solutions easy. The company's gateway works by:

• Making sure the cardholder's account has sufficient funds
• Placing a hold on funds to cover credit card transactions
• Transferring funds from the customer's bank to the business owner's bank at settlement

Settlement doesn't occur right away, but because Authorize.net ensures funds are in the customer's account immediately and places a hold on those funds, you can rest assured that the funds will be in your account soon, guaranteed.

From your dashboard, you can control your payment gateway's functionality. For instance, if you don't need all the features turned on, you can turn off the ones you don't need. Features you turn on are available immediately. Merchants can enjoy numbered invoices and inventory tracking with up-to-the-moment inventory levels.

What are the benefits of Authorize.net for high-risk merchants?

Authorize.net boasts of having helped facilitate over a billion dollars' worth of high-risk merchants' payments. Some of the benefits of using this payment gateway include:

• Encrypted user information
• PCI compliance
• Industry-specific regulation compliance
• Well-established relationships with top credit card companies, such as Visa
• High-risk payments acceptance

Authorize.net was designed with high-risk merchants in mind. Traditional payment processors can't assume the risk associated with certain high-risk industries, which can leave business owners without a merchant account. Authorize.net protects your business so you can continue selling your products or services to your customers.

The only question remaining is how to get Authorize.net for your eCommerce store. In a word? Integrations.

Zenti offers several integrations for eCommerce businesses. Call us today at (248) 422-1398 to see how we can help you beat the "bad rap" of high-risk.

Why do eCommerce merchants need integrations?

If you've had your eCommerce store open for a while, it's likely you already have integrations and just don't know it. If your products are listed on your website, you have shopping cart functionality and a payment page — these are all examples of eCommerce integration. An eCommerce platform that provides all of these things and more is solid and gives merchants access to the customers in search of what they offer.

Some of the most recognizable eCommerce platforms include:

• Shopify
• Opencart
• Magento
• BigCommerce

But not all eCommerce platforms offer all of this, especially for high-risk merchants, hence the need for eCommerce integrations. So, let's take a look at BigCommerce and see how this giant in the eCommerce industry stacks up and how you can integrate Authorize.net with your BigCommerce site.

Experian estimates that 30% of Americans have poor or bad credit, according to the company's 2015 Vantage Score 3.0 data. Furthermore, people with scores between 300 and 600 are most likely denied access to good lending opportunities due to their low score status.

This isn't just a struggle for someone new on their own but also for those whose economic downturn has hit in recent years.

The majority of people don't have excellent credit, but there are still some who do. On the other end of the credit world, only 22% of people have an "excellent" or a super prime score between 781 and 850 according to data from Experian – scores that fall in either category would be considered traditionally excellent by financial experts.

The rest falls somewhere on this scale while being placed into one group or another, depending on their FICO's number ranking at any given time.