There are ways around it and you should have had protect with 3D secure and VBV. I’m happy to talk with you more.

A week or so later i received a call saying that they were shutting down my account due to high volume of suspected fraudulent activity.
Obviously i was shocked and did everything i could to hold on to my account, this included going to the police(who were no help at all) without my consent or warning rbs took £5000 from my account to cover any chargebacks that might come.

They left my account open and said that if there was any further fraudulent activity they would have to shut down the account, i then vetted every single order and if anything looked slightly suspicious i refunded the order. After a while no more fraudulent orders were even attempted.

Despite this they then said a week or so later that they have come to the decision to shut the account down, i appealed and they left it open for another month until i found a new merchant account. I managed to get another account with Chase paymentech and actually started trading with them however after a month with them they found that i was on the match/ TMF list which i found out RBS had put me on a month after the account was terminated. Chase promptly closed my account with them.

RBS accepted that the incident wasnt my fault but they claimed that they had to put me on the list according to mastercard policy.

The real kick in the teeth is that there were no chargebacks claimed and they gave me back the whole £5000 so the whole situation didnt leave the bank out of pocket at all.

The problem now is that i cant get a merchant account anywhere and it is seriously damaging the progress of my business. I have had minimal chargebacks (less than 0.5%) since the incident which was over a year ago and have been trading using paypal standard. So my question is what the hell am i supposed to do and is there anyway to get off the the TMF file???

Its really annoying because the site has done well and ive even managed to get a grant from the BBC but still no merchant account!!

1) An advertiser marketed his products online via trial offer with an affiliate network
2) Customers accepted his trial offer by signing up with a credit card
3) The advertiser ran into cash flow issues so he sold the customer’s credit card information to a data broker so that the data broker could rent the data to various companies for the purpose of card on file sales.
4) One or many sales floors rent the data from the data broker and call the card holders and sell them products. The sales floor sees a higher call to sale ratio if all they have to say is “would you like to buy this using your credit card ending in 9830?”
5) One or many of the sales floors or the data brokers themselves, have an employee or employees that steel the cardholder’s data.
6) The data thief becomes a sub affiliate of an affiliate network.
7) The data thief signs up the cardholders for your, and other, trial offers through an affiliate network.
You pay the affiliate network for what you think are real sales and they pay the data thief.
9) The cardholder disputes the charges and you are responsible for the fees and losses of the merchant account. You are also looked at as a scammer and placed on the industry’s MATCH File.
10) In many cases, not necessarily yours, Jared, you get fed up with the industry and sell the data you have to a data broker and cut your losses.

This is an obviously damaging cycle and is happing everyday in this space. We have met the changes of this cycle by indentifying bad traffic before it’s approved and in other cases immediately after. In order to play in the affiliate space you need to be prepared with the best systems in place. That is the reason we have developed and have been successful with our TransGrade CRM. It’s designed to keep your conversions high with quality traffic and manage your customers in a responsible manner.

You went out to do good business and suffered at the hands of reckless fraudsters. It’s not your fault, albeit to the card associations, you might as well be the fraudster yourself.
Your question is; how do I get off the match list. With a 26% chargeback ratio it’s unlikely that you will get off any time soon. You see, if a bank puts you on the MATCH list they are the only ones that can take you off. If a bank puts you on the list then takes you off, that bank is responsible for any fees and negative actions associated with your activity for the next 5 years. That’s just some of the politics of the industry.

That does not mean you don’t have options. There are processors that understand this type of issue and will work with you. It sometimes costs a little more but the alternative of not accepting credit cards online is not really an option.
If you are planning to get back into this arena with your eyes open to this type of problem, then the first thing you should do is call our office and ask to speak with me. We can provide you with a system that protects you against these and other type if pitfalls with our extensive experience and technology. We also have relationships with processors that will accept your business, even if you are on the MATCH list, just because you are working with us.
I know this must have been a difficult and expensive lesson. I can tell you that the most successful people in this industry have similar experiences and overcome them. I’m sure you will be able to also.

We’re here to help.

There are ways to resolve processor issues and have your name removed from the TMF list. The key to staying off the list is making sure you are staying on top of where your chargebacks are at all times. I suggest you attempt to resolve this issue with your previous processor. If you can not resolve the issue you always have the option to search for an offshore account.

Please help. This business supports a family of 5 and we need to process credit cards.