How to Get Out of a Merchant Account Contract Cancelling a merchant account contract without paying an Early Termination Fee (ETF) can be one of the most difficult problems a small business owner can face. In fact, most business owners who encounter this issue are often caught by complete surprise because the cancellation fee was never revealed during the account setup process (aside from a single sentence buried in the fine print of a 10+ page service agreement). The first thing to understand is that there isn't a guaranteed method for getting out of a merchant account contract without paying a cancellation fee; however, there are tactics that can increase your chances of successfully exiting one of these contracts while keeping the providers out of your checking account. This 2-part article will cover the most important areas of merchant account cancellation starting with how to prevent getting into this situation in the first place. Part-2 will discuss how to prepare for an account cancellation before notifying the processor, methods to both stop the ETF from being taken from your account, and recovering an ETF after its already been taken. Most of these tactics are gathered from either personal experience as a former sales agent of the merchant credit card processing industry, or from relayed actual merchant experience. Part 1 -- Prevention We can't cover merchant account cancellation without briefly explaining how merchants get themselves into this frustrating situation. In the majority of cases, the problem stems from four mistakes: Failing