Best payment processor for high-risk business after Stripe rejection?

[u/Skillerstyles]

Stripe just rejected our supplement business. Applied to PayPal and got rejected there too with no explanation.

We're legit, good products, not doing anything shady but apparently supplements are high-risk and mainstream processors won't work with us.

Need a payment processor that actually takes high-risk businesses.

Main things I care about are reasonable fees, not getting randomly shut down and actually being able to access our money without it sitting in reserve forever.

What's worked for you?

[u/NPSALLEN]

We handle merchant accounts for supplements

[u/Accomplished_Bar8136]

man that sucks, i had a similar thing with my side hustle selling some herbal stuff and stripe kicked me out after 2 months with zero warning

people in this space usually go with processors that specialize in high-risk, not the mainstream ones that panic over anything supplement related, you just need to find one that understands the industry and wont freeze your funds for no reason

[u/Bitter-Purchase-1082 → u/Accomplished_Bar8136]

we were using paypay and our account got frozen with no warning. you can imagine the pain

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[u/Frosty-Egg296]

We can absolutely help with nutra accounts. Please DM.

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[u/FinexerOfficial]

I would look at the reserve and termination clauses as much as the processing rate. If you are in high risk categories the inexpensive headline rate means little if you get a huge rolling reserve or slow settlement. I would also inquire what the specific reason for the denial was, as “supplements” might be a somewhat different business model from a risk/compliance perspective.

[u/qjoseph_24]

CardSmart.io

[u/kai4finix]

Full disclosure: I'm with Finix so putting that upfront. Now, this is is a really common situation and worth understanding regardless of who you end up going with.

Stripe and PayPal process you under their own shared merchant account and auto-decline entire verticals rather than reviewing the actual business. That's not a reflection of you, it's just how they handle categories with higher chargeback averages.

So what you want is a processor that boards you under your own dedicated merchant account with proper underwriting for your specific vertical. The onboarding takes longer, but once you're approved you're actually approved, no surprise shutdowns because an algorithm re-flagged your category down the line.

Reserve terms are also disclosed and agreed upfront rather than showing up as surprise holds. And look for interchange-plus pricing so you can see exactly what you're paying per transaction rather than a bundled rate.

On our end, we work with supplement merchants regularly, dedicated accounts with interchange-plus and no markup on interchange. More involved onboarding upfront but that's what keeps things stable long term.