Your business is LOSING money…
If you are only taking cash or check for your services.
I see this question ALL the time in our Facebook Community.
“How can I process credit card payments as a credit repair business?”
Because credit repair is considered to be a high-risk industry, the traditional systems other businesses might use won’t work.
And the reality is most people WANT to make payments with a credit or debit card.
That’s why I sat down with Rick Kamal, the CEO of 5 Star Processing, to get you the secrets to processing credit card payments FAST.
Rick Kamal is an amazing entrepreneur. As the founder of 5 Star Processing, he has helped so many credit repair businesses to get their merchant account (and knows a TON about the money side of credit repair). Before starting 5 Star Processing, Rick actually opened his own credit repair business using Credit Repair Cloud! Blending his experience in credit repair with a background in banking, Rick has built a very successful business focused on merchant accounts but also help educate people on business credit and lending. They even offer a variety of business resources and services to help small business owners get everything going from start to finish.
So you can learn the easy steps to take credit card payments, I’m sharing some highlights from my interview with Rick.
What is a merchant account and why are they important?
A merchant account is a financial service product or a business product to help you take credit card payments from your customers and deposit them into your bank account. It's very important to have one simply from an automation standpoint, you wanna make money while you're asleep. And the real reality is most people when they make payments, want to pay you with a credit card or debit card in this day and age. So, you lose business just by only taking cash or check.
A lot of people try to get around having a merchant account by being sneaky and trying to pay on PayPal, Stripe, Square, Cash App, and all those other services. And what happens when you try to do that?
Because it’s against their terms of service, your merchant service account will get closed down with those companies. Credit repair is considered a higher-risk industry type. We've seen clients try to disguise themselves with different names just to avoid the word credit repair. For us, we can help you. We can definitely get you rock-in-rolling. But the companies you had mentioned will shut you down because they're not set up to take credit repair specifically.
How high a credit score do you need to get a merchant account?
So, we've told clients you can have a score around 550 but what we tell everyone is not just credit-based. We look at your whole portfolio, so you might have challenging credit, but you still wanna be able to take payments from your customers and might have very healthy bank statements. So we tell everyone, let's look at your full portfolio and we're an advocate for you and we'll fight for you till the end to get you that merchant service approval that you're looking for.
Once someone gets a merchant account, are there are other parts needed to collect money?
Yes! There is a gateway (such as authorize.net) which is like a middleman. They're the ones that will let you in a door, right? So whenever you type in a transaction, they are a virtual terminal. So they're gonna be able to let you take transactions right there in the spot. If you wanna a type the card number right then, and there, or if you wanna be able to connect it to your website or your subscription-based billing platform, like Billsby, you can connect it over there. And it also does have the invoicing recurring billing features on there. So a gateway secures the payment, sends it to the merchant service processor, like 5 Star Processing, which will give it all the data.
If you want to learn more about all these different parts, check out the Guide to Getting Paid.
Can you explain more about what a chargeback is?
Sure! A chargeback is when a customer calls their bank and disputes the transaction for different reasons. Like “services were not rendered.” “I'm not sure what this transaction's for” or “I didn't allow this transaction.” There's a variety of different things that they can dispute. The bank then credits them X amount of dollars. They have to pull that money from somewhere. So they pull it from that business. Since you are in a credit repair space and you send that paperwork, for example, to PayPal or to Stripe, verifying that it's your actual transaction. But unfortunately, once they find out that you're set up as a credit repair business your account's gonna get shut down. That's why it's important to choose a merchant service company that is aware this industry type does get chargebacks, so they can swallow those chargebacks. So if you do need to dispute it and say, "Hey, the services were rendered". You won't be in a position to have your merchant service account closed. You'll be in a position to get the money back that you deserve.
What's your advice to anyone, just starting out with a credit repair business?
My advice for anyone starting out with a credit repair business is to make sure you keep it simple. There are so many people out there that want to go from zero to a hundred real quick because they see this person's success, or they're seeing screenshots of someone doing $70,000. But everyone started at $1. So I'd say, keep it very simple and educate your customers before you sell or offer any services to your customers.
Want even more tips and tricks from merchant account EXPERT, Rick Kamal? Listen to the whole interview on YouTube so you can process credit card payments fast and GROW your business.
AND if you want to get certified in disputing and launch your very own credit repair business in just a couple of weeks, I invite you to join our Credit Hero Challenge!
It’s an amazing program that has helped tons of Credit Heroes get their first clients, get certified in disputing, and gain confidence in knowing they are launching their credit repair business on a solid foundation that allows them to grow and scale FAST!
We’re starting again soon, so SIGN UP NOW at creditherochallenge.com!