My Merchant Account Blog

Changing Merchant Account Providers

Friday, December 25, 2009

Changing merchant account providers can be very tedious at times, but it might be well worth it if the new merchant account provider is giving you more fraud prevention tools to prevent chargebacks and fraudulent transactions.  Unfortunately, these tools are built into the electronic payment gateway which is usually the reason some merchants do not want to change.

Electronic Payment Gateways

The electronic payment gateway (Quantum Gateway (recommended), Authorize.net (recommended), Payflow, LinkPoint / YourPay / First Data Global Gateway (not recommended)) is basically the virtual connection between your website and the transaction processors / card associations.  This can be compared to the point-of-sale (POS) terminal found in most retail businesses today.

Usually, if you have been processing with another provider and you have a good history (low chargeback ratio, etc), your merchant account will usually be approved within a day or so.  We recommend that you keep your other merchant account provider until the new merchant account provider has approved you.  We also recommend that you get a test store from the electronic payment gateway (if applicable) so you can test the connection.

If you are only changing merchant account providers and not the electronic payment gateway, you can just sign into the electronic payment gateway control panel and update your new merchant account identification number.

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