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We are Accept Credit Cards, is a division of Electronic Merchant Systems Inc. Accept Credit Cards has been processing credit cards for businesses since 1988. Originally located in Arlington, Virginia, we now serve thousands of merchants nationwide from our headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.

This post is kind of ancient, but since I just noticed it up and have the definitve correct answer, I thought I'd share it anyway if anybody cares to know.

The reason credit card processors check credit is because:  A processing merchant account is a line of credit, just like any other loan product.  The processor advances the merchant his monies for each transaction in return for a sales voucher, which is basically just a promissory note.  There is risk involved if the promissory note turns out to be defective or otherwise non-enforcable, in which case the processor depends on the merchant to make good on the advanced monies---if the merchant can't or won't, the processor 'eats' it.  So pulling credit accomplishes two things:  (1) it gives the processor an idea of how much risk the merchant is 'good' for, and (2) it gives the processor an idea of if a particular merchant honors his financial obligations, or defaults on them. To put it bluntly, if a person doesn't honor  his debts, who wants to advance money to a person like that?

Generally, a merchant doesn't need perfect credit, just average or acceptable depending on business type--no one-size-fits-all answer here.  If you have terrible credit, recent bankruptcies etc. you may have a challenge but will still probably find a processing home somewhere if  you work with someone who knows where to look, albeit at a much higher cost--it's the old risk/reward thing at work here.  And there are processors who specialize in the 'credit challenged' merchant---again at higher cost.  It's a matter of finding them.

As for the poster who stated that authorize.net is the only entity that checks credit, that poster is absolutely 10000% off the wall incorrect.  In the first place, ALL processors check credit for reasons stated above.  In the second place, authorize.net isn't even a processor, they are a gateway provider which is completely different.

AMSPCS

amspcs@juno.com

www.MerchantServics-helpcom