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Education

What can we do?
It is not hard to envision this when viewing the electronic
The first step in protecting your merchant revenue and payments sector from an acquirer's perspective. Merchant
residuals is to reduce risks of MATCH listings. Begin acquiring is a global market driven by intense competition,
by identifying the high-risk (or potentially high-risk) price compression, high-volume and low-profit margin
merchants in your portfolio. Risk can be associated with the revenue dynamics, and constantly changing types of risk
merchant category code, merchant type, or products and with corresponding layers of changes in laws, rules and
services offered. Check to see if your merchants operate regulations. Under these circumstances, it is easy to see
in a manner that appears risky, or have product or service how even a well-intentioned acquirer can erroneously add
types that are receiving increased risk – based on scrutiny merchants to MATCH.
from card brands, regulators and law enforcement.
Handled correctly, merchants added to MATCH in error
News reports and press releases may aid this evaluation. can also be removed from MATCH to create a mutually
In instances like money laundering, the risk may be hidden positive outcome. Your hard-earned merchant portfolio
behind what initially appears to be a low-risk merchant revenue, value and residual income can be restored.
type (so search for those "low risk" merchants that look too Moreover, the integrity of the electronic payments
good to be true). system and its efforts to combat fraud, crime and risk
can be fortified by maintaining a more accurate MATCH
Also ask whether your merchants are at risk of appearing database. Accurate information helps prevent valuable
to be, or becoming, questionable merchants in a merchant loss by effectively identifying true high risk and reducing
category that will be quickly swept away as excessively the likelihood of unnecessarily loss of revenue due to false
high risk when the regulatory or card brand winds of positive high-risk identifications.
change start to blow.
Your merchant portfolio is your lifeblood. Protect your
Carefully review your merchants' current operations for revenue and residuals by making sure your merchants are
compliance. Depending upon your structure, you can not sitting ducks for MATCH listing.
request merchants to update their operational information
for your internal review, or you may outsource this
function to a competent service provider. Anthony (Tony) L. Ogden is the founder and Principal Legal Counsel
for BankCardLaw.com, where the mission is strengthening merchant
Wherever risks are identified, operational changes should credit card accounts. The website is www.BankCardLaw.com and Tony
be quickly implemented to bring questionable merchants can be contacted by email at tony.ogden@bankcardlaw.com and by
into compliance and reduce the risk of violating card telephone at 310-888-7746. The information in this article is solely for
brand rules, laws or regulations and potentially creating educational purposes; it is not legal advice and is not intended to be
brand damage. Proactively reducing risks of MATCH relied upon as legal advice.
listing may prevent the
nightmare of losing your
hard-earned merchant
revenue and residuals.
An ounce of prevention
is worth 100 pounds of
cure when your earnings
are at stake.

What else can we do?
Next, re-examine and de-
lete erroneous MATCH
listings. When your
merchants are termi-
nated and listed on
MATCH, it is important
to re-examine the basis
for their MATCH listings
to ensure that they were
not the product of error. I
have seen many cases of
MATCH listings that re-
sulted from error.

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