There may be an application fee or sometimes called a processing fee. This fee absorbs the cost to process an application for approval. It takes a lot of effort and time for reviews, follow up and several departments to come to an approval and in some cases time and time again. The merchant processor goes through several channels on the merchant’s behalf. By paying this fee initially gives the merchant a vested interest in the account process and a paid status confirms this to the processor and the bank to move forward.
The bank will require back up documentation that must be consistent with the merchant application. Some items that they review are bank statements, tax returns, financials, processing statements, a business plan and advertising materials. The documentation should be scanned in and emailed in effort to be sure that all credentials are received clear and concise. Faxing documents sometimes is acceptable, however most of the time it doesn’t come in clearly as needed to decipher for the banks. Do not cross out or send partial copies. The banks will reject such papers as incomplete.
With paperwork requests all is time-sensitive as documents may be determined irrelevant to the bank if they are not considered current. Current is usually within the very last three months. This is also with the application date can expire and they may ask for a new one if too much time has gone by without the proper paperwork needed to proceed and the cycle may need to be refreshed all over again. It is very important that the merchant understand this.
Another thing the banks look at is the foundation of the company. They review several things when determining that and may have several requests such as; adjusting terms and disclosures, customer service, memberships and revolving charges and altering the business website. This is all in effort to better your business so you will want to follow specific instruction and be steadfast about it as this may determine rates and approval or not.