Article During the time being in the payment service provider business I came through a lot of cases where Merchants pretended to sell legal Pharmacy products, also called non controlled drugs. In the early beginning of 2003
During the time being in the payment service provider business I came through a lot of cases where Merchants pretended to sell legal Pharmacy products, also called non controlled drugs. In the early beginning of 2003 the card association's regulations changed due to many Online Merchants in the Pharmacy business sold controlled drugs behind their main websites, which defiantly isn't allowed.
MasterCard was the first of the big 3 credit card companies that stopped processing for Online Pharmacies due to the fact they wasn't able to control the many online pharmacy websites nor the payment services providers which handled the payment transactions. Visa decided to still deal with this type of business and asked the merchant to provide legal opinions from a lawyer or notary, this was mend to protect them self from getting merchants processing credit card payments for websites selling controlled drugs and to back up their bag if something goes wrong.
First it looks like the business was in the process to be "cleaned" from Online Pharmacy websites which won't play by the rules. At this time it was still possible in some cases to obtain a Mastercard credit card acceptance , and some Acquiring Banks around the World seemed not to follow the global regulations by the card associations because there was good money to earn while processing for Online Pharmacies selling non controlled and controlled drugs. However a few years later it wasn't possible any longer since the Card Association including Visa and Mastercard started to issue huge penalties to those Merchant's and Merchant Service providers which breached the regulations, fines in the range of USD 25.000 to USD 150.000 per incident.
Today it is only possible to obtain a Merchant Account with Visa credit card acceptance, some Merchant Account- and Payment Service Providers do still pretend to be able to open Merchant Accounts for Online Pharmacy's which include Mastercard credit card acceptance, those are fake, or they hide those transactions and code them as something else than what it is, Online Pharmacy. Sometimes it is strange, since on one side the Card Association has to deal with their preferred Payment Service Providers to tell them what is allowed and which isn't, and on the other hand the payment service provider's have to tell the merchants what they can sell and not, this looks as a good way to regulate the entire business.
But since there is so much money involved in processing Online Transactions for business which are strictly forbidden or require license to sell, then some Payment Service Providers and Acquiring banks look to involve them self in this business as long as no one ask questions and the merchants processing their credit cards don't get caught by the Visa Monitoring program or they face massive chargebacks.
Continues on the forum, see the link below..........
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