Alright well I'm out of ideas here I went to apply for a merchant account over at e-onlinedata.com and they needed me to fax some stuff over which was asking a lot as they needed past statements from like 2checkout or paypal, they wanted photo ID scanned, Social Security, a Voided business check (Which I purposely got this account TO get eonlinedata as a merchant) and documents showing your bank info and all that. Well I got an e-mail saying the check was too dark and they needed a brighter version. I don't own a fax machine at home so I've been faxing everything from the bank anyways I got e-mailed this today


_XXX__ Does not meet our credit underwriting criteria

_XXX__ Insufficient or lack of established personal credit

_XXX__ Information obtained from application

_XXX__ Other: Did not meet age requirements to obtain a merchant account


First off I have a credit card and pay my bills so how do I have insufficient credit

Second it says Did not meet age requirements? Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the minimum age to start a business or get a merchant account 18? Is there any merchant out there that does NOT check credit? I need something to implent with WHM AP and I'm really tired of waiting, I've waited 2 weeks and am tired of 2checkouts rates as it's costing me a LOT of money.

You may not have meet their age requirement. The underwritting departments have their own rules.

Just because you have a credit card and pay your bills on time doesn't mean you have "good credit". Everything today is based on the beacon score. If you've only got one or two open accounts, your beacon score will be pretty low even if you've never been late on anything. As for age requirements, they may have it set at 21 or 25 instead of 18, or they may not be able to read your date of birth properly. Also, every time your credit is pulled your beacon score is lowered by 15 points for up to 6 months - so if you've been applying other places that could bring it down too.

Even though you're not getting a loan, the merchant company takes a risk by giving you an account. If a charge-back comes through, the merchant company has to to honor the chargeback request (providing it is proven valid) and return the funds to the card-holder's credit card company - whether the merchant company can collect those funds from you or not.

They want your banking history/credit history to be able to determine whether they'll be able to get that money back from you if a charge-back takes place.

Give Wells Fargo a call (www.wellsfargo.com) and explain your situation to them, maybe they can help you out. They're a real bank, not a middle-man, and can get you set up with a merchant account and the Authorize.Net gateway, which is the best in my opinion. You'll probably be able to get everything cheaper through them anyway, since you're cutting out the middle-man.

I tried charge.com seeing if they will help. I'm getting rather discouraged though as it seems like even after I do everything right there is always something to hold me back and just another obstacle in the way of my course to hold me back. At least charge.com doesn't require any faxing.

Most places consider 21+ as adults so that could be the case

What about a quick loan, would that work? That can establish good credit yes?

Not sure why faxing documents for some sort of application is an idea that is difficult to handle. Any merchant account provider has the responsibility of ensuring that merchant applications are legitimate according to their standards. They had every right to request all the information they requested; if you didn't like this, you shouldn't be interested in their service in the first place.

If something is difficult for you to accomplished, wait or find a better solution. As far as I know, e-onlinedata didn't force you to apply for their merchant service.

I personally wouldn't be so shocked that a merchant account provider requests for such documentation. If you go to a local bank for such service, you wouldn't have to necessarily fax them copies of documents but they still need to know if you are who you are saying you are. I would be more assured to know that a merchant account provider goes out of their way to check your identity instead of being eager to give away merchant accounts without doing any kind of risk assessment.

Oh and I'd check with some people who frequent the ecommerce forums, I'm sure they are very knowledgeable WHT members there who would be glad to assist you.

Good luck

Well, it really depends on what his problem is. If he's got "slow credit", adding a bunch of new loans is going to put on more inquiries and make his beacon score drop even lower, plus throw off the debt to income ratio. It would work over long term - say get a bunch of new loans and pay them all off within 6 months, then don't do any further inquiries for ANOTHER 6 months, but that would take him a year before he could go back.

Just keep in mind that every time someone pulls your credit, you lose 15 points off the beacon score. A friend of mine who is normally in the 800's (aka: outstanding) went to get a mortgage and because the different departments pulled his credit so many times, his beacon score actually dropped to about 570 which is really low. Of course this doesn't normally happen, the people at the mortgage company he went through were a bunch of idiots ... but it just sucked because here was a guy with perfect credit, just bought a house, and couldn't even go get a department store card after the closing to go buy furniture. He had to wait about 6 months for his score to go back up.

well, I've been denied an account with Paysystems but i DO have a real merchant account. *shrug*

I was accepted into 2checkout I'm surprised they don't do credit checks, afterall if a user has a ton of chargebacks that will ruin them pretty bad.

I just gave charge.com a call, no faxing required which is a good thing. Their prices are a little higher but they told me that there is rarely anyone denied and that credit is not an issue. I have a friend that uses them and he supposedly was just building credit and got accepted without any problems, hope they accept me.

You can checkout CDG Commerce
http://cdgcommerce.com/whtpromo

Nationhosts:

Check cdgcommerce.com before you do anything else. I would be VERY surprised if you were turned down and they have MUCH better rates than 2CO or Paysystems. If its at all possible, Chris will get you setup.

--Tina

I think the majority of the reason I'm being turned down is I have insufficient credit.

Does CDG work with WHMAP?

TALK TO CDGCOMMERCE.COM :D

I would like to add this. A few years back I ran into the same situation. I ended up using a co-signer to get the merchant account approved.

I was like, credit to "TAKE" money.

Well what it boils down to is the bank gives you the $$ on the grounds that you are supplying the service to the consumer, they have no idea if you will run your limit up and split town, leaving your merchant account bank refunding money to consumers, so in short it is a line of credit.

It was a lot easier getting a co-signer for this than a loan. Do you have anyone that will co-sign.

The only person I have that could cosign is my mother and her credit isn't very good either due to some personal reasons. Shes not listed on my business checking account though..

>>>>>>>>>> TALK TO CDGCOMMERCE.COM <<<<<<<<<<<

*sheez*

You should post in the E-Commerce Discussion forum or have this thread moved..

I think CDGCOMMERCE.COM hangsout there more often

Originally posted by AffordableHost
>>>>>>>>>> TALK TO CDGCOMMERCE.COM <<<<<<<<<<<
:idea: :blush:

Don't know how else you can get more obvious than that :stickout:

Originally posted by Toeki
You should post in the E-Commerce Discussion forum or have this thread moved..

I think CDGCOMMERCE.COM hangsout there more often

This is not entirely a e-commerce topic. We are not talking about setup shopping carts, etc. We are talking about a merchant account needed to run a hosting business and the difficulty obtaining an account. This could be a punch pad or card swipe account and may not even be an online account.

I think this ok to be in this forum.

I would follow Tina's advice and try another merchant account provider.

I have already applied with charge.com but if I am denied I will check out ODG, I sent them an e-mail seems like they have no problems about credit either, they do want me to fax some stuff similar to e-onlinedata but at least I know they don't have anything regarding credit. My question is if some companys don't care about credit isn't that risky to them?

Onky suggestion is watch that exchange rate, they may say you are ok, but are known to lock you in a higher discount rate and/or require $$ down.

I'm just not sure, what do you think he should do Tina?

:D

I feel like the AFLACK duck...the one that walks around saying AFLACK...and no one listens. lol

CDGCommerce is tops, DEFINITELY can't say enough about them. They're great.

We originally figured they were saving us about $8000 a year in fees...but, now that we've been using them for about a month, I think it's going to end up being closer to $10,000 a year in fees.

Not only that, but Chris has been really great in helping us hammer out some customized solutions for some of our specific merchant account needs.

--Tina

I kept it simple got a whoiscart license and I'm set :D

What's whoiscart?

We've actually been looking for an alternative to ModernBill...think we're going to eventually end up writing our own.

Whoiscart actually interfaces with CDG right now. It's very simple without a lot of the garbage that MB has.

www.whoiscart.net not real fancy but it does basic billing and recurring billing just fine, it also interfaces quite snazzily with enom and directadmin (and others I use those myself though). It's like $35 so even if you scrap it you're not out a huge wad of cash.

According to Chris, CDG is in the middle of working with WHM Auto Pilot for integration right now :D

-Josh

CDG offers two "gateways", authorize.net and CDG Gateway. Authorize.net already works with WHMAutopilot and as Josh stated, Chris is working on getting the CDG version in as well.

aren't they authorize.net resellers?

First... thank you very much, everyone, for the kind words. :)

And yes, in answer to your question, NationHosts... CDG is an authorized reseller for Authorize.Net but as others have mentioned, it is not the only gateway that we provide.

In addition, as others have mentioned in this thread... each merchant processor sets their own criteria for approval since at the end of the day, they are the ones taking the risk on the account.

Some merchant account providers have more stringent and specific requirements; others are more flexible. But each one differs in various ways.

In your particular case, it is not that your credit is "bad" - it just isn't sufficiently established to "show up on the radar", so to speak. As a result, it makes it difficult for ISO's and banks to be able to verify or validate much information from your credit report.

Remember - the credit report is not just a means of determining the chance of default or the payment history, it is also a means by which to match up other info on the merchant app and to prevent fraud.

Last but not least... I think that you stand a very good chance of getting a merchant account as there are companies who will understand your specific situation and work it out with you, perhaps just requiring a little bit more documentation as part of that process.

i would try paysystems. they have resonable rates and even allow you to scan your documents and email them to them vs having to fax or mail them the stuff.

There are also a few merchant account providers that also allow e-mailed copies of scanned apps.

In reality, a scanned image of a merchant app and the supporting docs is actually of a much higher quality than most faxes anyways... only makes sense, but not everyone shares that opinion. :)

Uh I think paysystems is 3rd party..

I'm 18 and I just signed up for an account with e-Onlinedata with no hassles. The only part I had a problem with was getting the bank letter from my bank that they required. I ended up having to open a business account because they were going to make ACH deposits under my business name, and my account is under my personal name; my bank wouldn't approve of any ACH deposits being made not under my personal name. So I guess it all depends on your bank. But other than that, signup was pretty smooth.

Originally posted by ljprevo
This is not entirely a e-commerce topic. We are not talking about setup shopping carts, etc. We are talking about a merchant account needed to run a hosting business and the difficulty obtaining an account. This could be a punch pad or card swipe account and may not even be an online account.

I think this ok to be in this forum.

I would follow Tina's advice and try another merchant account provider.


Yeah this is related to e-commerce so it's definitely appropriate for this forum.


Originally posted by AffordableHost
We've actually been looking for an alternative to ModernBill...think we're going to eventually end up writing our own.

Those custom billing systems are usually the greatest things on earth, but sometimes can be "interesting". ;)

I'm with HRTimothy on this. A lot of things discussed could be moved to other forums, but overall this is an e-commerce topic and it is in the right forum. :)

NationsHost: I would check with the provider that denied your application. It could fall under the Fair Credit Reporting Act since they most likely did a "hard inquiry" from one of the three major credit agencies.

I am not entirely certain on this, but since you were denied, by law they have to state specific reasons. They just can't say "didn't meet our requirements". The company has to state VERY specific reasons as to why you were denied. Again, I'm not sure if this falls under that Act. Best of luck to you!


Indy4: Your FICO score varies depending on a number of factors, not just hard inquiries on your credit reports.

It is typical for a lot of merchant account providers to send out a letter - or an email - when they decline a merchant and this usually states the reason(s) why.

Credit (or lack thereof, either due to no credit or bad credit) is usually not an issue that will prevent you from getting a merchant account these days.

The only type of credit that nobody will accept is an open bankruptcy that has not yet been discharged, for obvious reasons.

I could care either or, the original topic was in the running a hosting business.

The original topic was about getting denied a merchant account to run his hosting business.

Having a merchant account does not necessarily mean that they will process cards online.

I can see where it is either or. No big deal.

You could try

www.avpsolutions.com

They're doing a 24 hour approval system at the moment.

Thanks

G

Anothing thing...since they denied your application you are entitled for a free credit report from all 3 agencies! :) Just mail them a copy of your "denied" letter and you will receive a free copy.