If you’re interested in running a Fantasy Sports League and want to accept payments from people who sign up to play, you need a fantasy sports merchant account.
Unfortunately, Fantasy Sports are viewed as High Risk Business by the entire banking industry. That makes it difficult to find a payment gateway that will provide you with a Fantasy Sports merchant account that can process credit card payments.
Read on to find out why that is, and how 5 Star Processing can help you.
What Makes Fantasy Sports A High Risk Business?
The reasons for Fantasy Sports being treated as high risk are two-fold. On the one hand, the accepted view in banking is that putting money on, let’s say, a Fantasy Football game is the same as betting; or in other words, gambling.
Gambling is by default considered a high-risk activity and a high-risk industry. A gambling business must be able to cover payouts to winners in potentially very high amounts, making it much riskier than a “regular” business that at most has to have enough cash to issue a refund. This alone makes it more difficult to get a Fantasy Sports merchant account.
The second reason for Fantasy Sports to be categorized as high-risk is the high amount of credit card chargebacks in the industry. Most of these chargebacks happen because a customer is unhappy about losing their money on a game, and claims their payment as being fraudulent in order to get their money back.
It’s normal to investigate these chargeback claims to find out if there really is some fraud involved – but in Fantasy Sports, you can receive tens or even hundreds of chargebacks overnight. That makes it look highly suspicious, not to mention that it costs time and money to check every single claim.
Because of this, regular banks and most merchant account providers don’t accept Fantasy Sports clients by default – with no exceptions. Suppose you instead go to a mass-market payment gateway provider like PayPal. In that case, your account is also likely to be frozen or shut down almost immediately, and you risk losing any money you have collected into it.
That leaves you with very few options, and that is why you need a High Risk Business Fantasy Sports Merchant Account.
How We Can Set Up Your Fantasy Sports Merchant Account
At 5 Star Processing, we have chosen to specialize in Merchant Accounts For High Risk Business. We can provide you with a secure payment gateway for your Fantasy Sports business that will let you collect payments from customers on the go.
You also won’t have to worry about chargebacks, because we accept the high ratio of chargebacks that is likely to happen with a Fantasy Sports merchant account.
And, most importantly, you can feel safe knowing that your money won’t go anywhere and you will have complete control of the funds coming into your account.
Let Us Guide You In Choosing The Right Merchant Account
Chances are that you love sports, and you want to turn it into a small business for fun – or maybe even a big, serious enterprise. Setting up a Fantasy Sports League sounds like the way to go.
But when you started working on this idea, you didn’t expect to have to deal with things like “payment gateways” and “fantasy sports merchant accounts for high risk business”…
We get it. That’s why we’re ready to guide you in this process so that you can focus on building your league instead of worrying about how you are going to let people pay to join it.
Contact 5 Star Processing at +(888) 253 9692 now, or shoot an email to sales@5starprocessing.com and we’ll help you with any questions you may have before you even begin an application. Let us guide you in choosing the correct merchant account for you today!
