Similarly, a high-risk merchant account is also a designation, only this one refers to the account that enables businesses like yours to accept payments made by debit card, credit card or a high-risk credit card. Like high-risk payments, merchant accounts may be classified this way for one or several reasons: High chargebacks High volume merchant account Out-of-country sales Industry type For example, CBD, telemarketing, fantasy sports, collections agencies, travel, online dating, gaming, casinos and fantasy sports are all classified as “high-risk” by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This isn’t a put-down, either. Frequently, it’s just the nature of the beast and occurs through no fault of business owners themselves. High-risk payment processors may use other criteria for deciding what is and isn’t a high-risk merchant account (e.g. owner’s financial history, how long the company has been open for operations, etc.) but the above mentioned are the most common factors that affect this assessment. We work with all of these industries at T1 Payments, and many more.