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How to sell merchant accounts and ride a wave of interest in online business

Coronavirus, the economic and financial crisis all hit at the same time, opening on one side a gap in the pockets of people and business, and on the other giving new opportunities.

Where did the business “rush”?


You probably have not escaped the fact that everyone literally "rushed" to the Internet. Everyone who pulled to the last, who was looking for excuses and quoted the cat from the animated movie "We are fed well here," was very interested in online sales and finding customers. The old habitual life is over and in Russia and the CIS the process of perestroika is only beginning to accelerate.

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The demand for online courses and training for food delivery has risen sharply. Against the backdrop of a decline in demand, many companies that have already been online have activated stocks and started offering services, services, programs at minimal prices. If only the turnover did not freeze.
This led to the demand for opening merchant accounts - accounts to which you can remotely accept payments, most often from payment cards.

The most popular and simplest solution is to use the so-called payment gateways. Besides the fact that they allow you to quickly start accepting payments online, they often offer accepting several payment methods at once: card, bank, mobile operators, and so on.

However, there are pitfalls here too: the systems, of course, take their commission, and the technical part does not withstand the load of all. Information could have reached you that one of the leading payment gateways in Russia, which is used by tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, recently “went down” and did not work for a couple of days.

As reported by the support service, the service was under DDoS attacks. At the same time, it can be assumed that it was not possible to quickly establish work due to the high workload and outright panic among entrepreneurs and customers.

And despite the fact that the service is now functioning, it cannot be expected that this will not happen again - the system has been experiencing difficulties in recent months.

In such cases, it is always recommended to open additional merchant accounts in other systems and banks - to diversify risks. They are useful in case the main channel for receiving money breaks or the conditions on it become inaccessible to you and your business.

You can open a merchant account in the following organizations:

  • Bank;
  • Payment system;
  • Payment services (processing platforms).

Processing platforms may be beneficial at the start, but the higher the turnover, the more interesting the bank account can become. So the choice depends on your situation and available resources.

However, as part of this material, we will take a step further - instead of looking for where to open an additional or main merchant account, we will consider the possibility of creating our own service for providing merchant accounts to other clients.

Invite clients to open a merchant account


Money goes into the digital world more and more actively and it is worth using it to expand opportunities and stabilize your own company.

You can offer partners, customers and other companies help with online access and ensure that they accept payments through opening a merchant account.

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You will be interested in how to do it this way if your company, even if it has a suitable financial license, but does not have the necessary programs, services, developed documentation and AML processes and other things that government agencies require to carry out?

You can be calm: in our time even this problem has been partially solved for you.
The bottom line is this: there is special software that already implements all the technical aspects of such a service for providing merchant accounts.

Moreover, together with the programs you can get all the procedures, encryption, documents necessary for the functioning of your business. At the same time, you will not be engaged in all the technical happiness - this will be the responsibility of the provider company.

Your main task will be to attract customers.

What is it about?


Selling merchant accounts is a business. The same as selling boots or plugins for Wordpress in an online store. So, there are those who will offer you to automate almost all processes, regardless of what you do.

In this case, there is already a complex that allows you to launch your own processing service and offer merchant accounts to corporate clients.

Moreover, there are companies and services that allow you to hide the true manufacturer of the solution from the client and bring out only your brand.

This is called the White label - a solution in which the core is developed by a specific company, but when you sell the solution to you, it will be designed purely for your needs. As a result, you can call your company and service as you want and sell services to customers under your own brand.

What is the benefit of this solution?


  • You get a commission for the transactions of your customers;
  • High degree of customization for individual requests;
  • You don’t have a headache on how to program or configure the technical part;
  • You get a set of services that allows you to start your business almost instantly;
  • The ability to keep records;
  • Possibilities of a separate back office for servicing your customers by a company provider;
  • AML, KYC, PEP and other points that require legislation are already built into the system.

Speaking from the point of view of your corporate clients, they get the opportunity:

  • Accept payment by cards + if necessary, you can add other methods;
  • Integrate payments into the site and business;
  • Provide a reliable system for protecting data and transactions;
  • To secure your own unique IBAN-number as in a regular bank;
  • Open multi-currency accounts;
  • Use a multilingual interface;
  • Work with cryptocurrencies.

How to start a processing service for the sale of merchant accounts?


In order to become the owner of a processing system, you need to fulfill a number of conditions:

  1. You will need a company and a set of corporate documents;
  2. It is advisable to have a financial license - this may be a license for electronic money or a banking license. Now many companies have such a license and not everyone knows what to do with it. Opening merchant accounts is a good way to use an asset. If there is no license, then it can be obtained in a relatively short time.
  3. Also required are personal documents of the owners and directors of the company: copies of passports, proof of address;
  4. The technical base on which to install the software.

Before starting, they will help you set up the technical and software parts, provide a customer verification system, a control and reporting system.



The cost of the system consists of two parts: from the installation fee (set-up) and from the commission for monthly maintenance. The monthly fee is taken based on the number of transactions - the more there are, the less each of them costs. At the same time, there is a minimum amount threshold that is paid in any case.

The cost of the decision depends on the company of the supplier. At the moment there are several options. These are mainly European companies that themselves offer financial services, money transfers, and the like. On average, it is worth counting on an amount of 15,000 euros for launch and from 7,000 euros a monthly payment.

If you have a license, the system startup process can take a couple of weeks. If necessary, purchase a license - depends on the country of issue of the license.

The best part is that you can offer this service, both in your own country, and enter international markets with it. This allows multilingualism, and the demand for solutions is growing along with the number of companies that are rapidly going online.
This is one of the opportunities that the crisis provides.

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