The Special Requirements of High Volume Merchant Accounts

As mentioned, there are six areas that require special attention for high volume processing.

Security Safeguards : The large dollar value being processed daily calls for greater attention to security issues. Customer data needs to be safe from interception by hackers. This can be largely resolved with a variety of preventative steps, including virus and intrusion detection, pre-storage encryption, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and audit logs. In addition, the data must be physically secure from theft, fire and other hazards.

Easy Scalability: High volume merchants must be able to have their providers accommodate their needs for quick, large increases in their processing volumes. Such 'scalability' is achievable provided their processor of choice can add additional resources to increase bandwidth and system memory in a way that reduces any detrimental effects on the processing service.

Processing Speed: With high transaction volume comes the requirement for speedy processing of real-time concurrent transactions. Without the ability to quickly process orders, customers will be frustrated by having to wait in a queue to have their particular transaction dealt with. To achieve sufficient processing speed, a multi-tiered database, with the first tier dedicated to real-time transactions, and a second tier utilized solely for processing daily batch settlement reports and other functions that are not time sensitive, may be required.

Minimization of Fraud: High volume merchant accounts are 'high risk' to the processing companies and banks largely due to their susceptibility to chargebacks and fraud. You should ensure that the provider you choose is experienced in fraud reduction. The larger one's volume of transaction and sales revenues, the greater is the risk of fraud. And one's business can be negatively affected by fraud in several ways (and not just the higher incidence of chargebacks). The more fraudulent transactions there are to deal with, the more time that employees will have to spend in responding to them. To minimize the negative effects of fraud, the merchant can set high thresholds for its acceptance of orders from customers. The downside in so doing is that it will lose a number of legitimate orders - and the resulting revenue.

Customer Support: The more customers an online merchant has, the more requests the merchant's customer service staff and resources will receive - 24 hours a day. And as a result, the more support requests the merchant will make to its merchant account and processing provider. So the provider's own support services should also be available 24/7.

Uninterrupted Service: Obviously the higher a merchant's transaction volume, the more it will be hurt dollar-wise by downtime in its processing system. In order to ensure as far as possible that service is uninterrupted, the provider must have systems in place to minimize both interruptions due to external causes, as well as those caused by software & hardware failures of its own systems.