International merchant accounts or offshore merchant accounts are credit card processing companies that cater to certain businesses. Some businesses due to the nature of the products or services they deal in are kept at an arms length by regular credit card processing companies. In the light of this, these companies which are called high risk are better served by international or offshore companies to register their merchant accounts with. Such businesses include gaming websites, online casinos, telemarketing, adult websites, online pharmacies, cigarette businesses and a host of others.
As you can see most of these companies do their businesses online and would need a system to accept credit cards online. These international merchant account companies provide them the tools to process payments online through a virtual terminal. The services they provide include accepting credit and debit cards online, by phone or through mobile devices such as PDA’s and smart phones. They are already aware of the high risk nature of the business and therefore charge a premium transaction fee for each payment processed gambling merchant account.
Despite the disadvantage the merchant might have by paying a higher transaction fee, there are quite a lot of advantages in using the services of an offshore merchant account provider. Some of these advantages include a multi currency payment processing terminal. They can serve customers from any part of the globe and they process payment in many different currencies without any problems or delays. They have sophisticated scam control features and fraud protection systems built into their system and they also provide a virtual payment system in the form of a shopping cart situated right on your website. In addition to that, offshore companies can handle very large volumes of traffic and are neither constrained by low volumes. They also do not care if there is a high percentage of charge back or returns. Every transaction is processed accordingly and transaction fees applied to them accordingly.
Offshore merchant accounts also provide their customers instant online reports for their every day transactions and also work closely with the major credit card companies like Visa, MasterCard, Discovery and American Express. This gives the merchant an opportunity for global recognition and acceptance around the world, expanding their business across international borders.
