Supporting Documents Is KEY To A Quick Approval
Often merchants do not understand why they need so many supporting documents to apply for a merchant account and by being dis-organized about your supporting documents can cause the merchant account application process take longer and even cost you an approval. Applying for a merchant account is like applying for a short term loan.
Visa & Mastercard often settle up with a merchant within 2-3 business days after someone pays a merchant business via credit card and yet they wait 30 days before they collect from consumers and often don’t find out until that time whether the merchant fulfilled your services and/or products to the consumers. Because there is this huge risk of chargebacks to the credit card processing companies they are very specific on supporting documentation about your business to determine the risk factors involved in credit card processing. Therefore, they will require very specific information before they approve your account. In this article we will discuss those typically documents required and how to have them all in order to make your application process run quickly and smoothly.
Visa, Mastercard and everyone in between who provides their services is looking at your merchant application as if you are looking at a request to borrow money! So there are a few important documents we can provide right up front to make sure they receive the security they are looking for before opening this “lending” agreement. The same sort of documents one would provide for a bank loan would or can be applicable to a merchant services application. These documents fall into two Catagories:
- Business Information
- Personal Identification.
Business Information: The best sort of document to provide to solidify or confirm your Business info, should include your business name (Operating As) as well as your business’ Physical Address, such as any of the following:
- Master Business License
- Previous Processing Statements
- Gst or Business Registration Forms from the government
- Reputable online listings
- Utility bills are all great sources to help them validate your business information.
Personal Identification: The secondary type of i.d. one should provide in order to ensure a speedy approval for merchant services is related to the Personal info for merchant who is applying. Essentially, they are looking to confirm the home address so any of the following documents are great:
- Driver’s License
- Social Insurance Number
- Citizenship Number
- Age of Majority Card
- Permanent Residence card
More so than the documents themselves, what Visa and MC are really looking for is what I have coined “THE THREE C’S”.
- CLARITY
- CONSISTENCY
- COHESION
Clarity: Be sure they can see or read the entire document, copy quality is always important.
Consistency: make sure the support documents you are sending are valid, up to date and are true, in that they show the real current information for things like physical location, as you have presented it on your application.
Cohesion: it must flow, and make sense, for example, it is hard to believe one would have an industrial manufacturing business out of their home….so be sure what you are submitting is subject to common sense.
Now that you understand that applying for merchant account services is more like applying for a short term loan you can better understand their point of view. If you follow our recommended “THREE C’s” you will be more likely to receive an approval! If you would like to deal with a experienced merchant account broker who has proven track record of approvals by helping merchants organize their 3 C’s use our contact form here.
