Thanks for the article.
Could anybody reading this suggest a reliable payment gateway and merchant service .. thanks!
* a fitness studio
* recurring memberships
* any type of discount or free trial period.
From stripe's ban list:
"offering substantial rebates or special incentives as an inducement to purchase products or services;"
From a high risk provider:
"The main reason for the high risk tag is use of the recurring billing model for memberships. Customers usually give one-time permission up front for the business to charge them monthly until the customer cancels the membership. If customers skip over or forget about the terms of the authorization form they sign, these recurring charges might come as a surprise, leading them to initiate a chargeback against the business. This is a very common scenario for free trial models that lead into recurring billing. After a free trial, the start of an auto payment plan might catch the customer off guard.
There’s also the possibility of “friendly fraud”—when a customer abuses the chargeback system just to get their money back. Maybe they stopped using the membership and forgot to cancel. In any case, this can also lead to a chargeback against the business."
https://www.bankcardusa.com/health-fitness-merchant-accounts...
If you are going to be doing a business model that is not high risk - none of those items above are a yes - I would reach out to stripe and get things cleared up.
1) how easy is service to cancel. Put your cancellation link online not behind a business hours automated phone tree.
2) how trial periods work. Send customer email 3 days in advance to notify them that billing will begin if they don't take action and amount of bill with an easy way to cancel if desired.
Some SAAS I think is always high risk, SEO tools, email marketing, adult services related etc? Someone probably has a better high risk SAAS list. Basically, can someone uses a stolen card, or even their own card and signup for this service, spend $10K blasting emails to people, then claim unauthorized?