Dating

Why Dating businesses are considered High-Risk?

Age Verification:

  • Dating sites and apps often require users to be of legal age to use their services
  • Failure to verify user ages can result in legal and financial penalties for merchants
  • Age verification can be difficult to implement and can result in increased costs for merchants

 

Risk of Pornographic Content:

  • Some dating sites and apps may be used to distribute pornographic content
  • Merchants may face legal and financial penalties if their platform is used for illegal activities
  • Merchants may also face reputational damage and loss of customer trust

Sensitive and Personal Nature of Products:

  • Dating products deal with sensitive user data, including personal and financial information
  • Customers may dispute charges out of regret or embarrassment

 

High Chargeback Rates:

  • Dating products often require users to pay upfront for a subscription or membership
  • Customers may dispute charges if they are not satisfied with the service
  • Chargebacks can be costly for merchants
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Mitigation measures for Dating merchants to reduce risks when selling online

Merchants in the dating industry can take several mitigation measures to reduce risks associated with age verification and the risk of pornographic content when selling online.

Age Verification:

  • Merchants can use third-party age verification services to verify users’ ages and ensure they are of legal age to use the service.
  • Merchants can also use algorithms that analyze user behavior to flag potential underage users and take action accordingly.
  • Additionally, merchants can implement stricter user registration requirements, such as requiring a government-issued ID, to ensure user ages are accurately verified.

 

Risk of Pornographic Content:

  • Merchants can use content moderation tools to monitor user-generated content for pornographic material.
  • Merchants can also use algorithms to detect and flag potentially inappropriate content for manual review by a content moderation team.
  • Merchants can implement clear policies prohibiting the distribution of pornographic material on their platform and enforce them strictly, including terminating users who violate these policies.

 

Data Security:

  • Merchants can implement strong data security measures, including secure payment processing and encryption, to protect user data from breaches and theft.
  • Merchants can also use regular data backups to ensure they can recover quickly from any data loss incidents.
  • Merchants can comply with data protection regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and PCI DSS to ensure they meet data security and privacy requirements.

Being a high-risk merchant vs. a regular merchant

  • Higher payment processing fees
  • Lengthier application process
  • Higher chargeback fees
  • Cash reserve requirments:
    • Capped reserve
    • Rolling reserve
    • Upfrom reserve
  • Volume caps
  • Additional technical requirements
  • Being on the TMF / MATCH list

 

Check out our knowledge hub to learn more about what processing fees, application process, chargebacks and cash reserve requirements or TMF / MATCH list mean. 

Other risk factors?

There may be other risk factors as to why you as a Dating merchant are classified as a high-risk merchant, such as:

  • Accepting subscription-style payments

  • Being on the Member Alert to Control High-Risk Merchants, or MATCH list — a list managed by Mastercard that monitors merchant behavior, like chargeback history

  • High average transaction sizes

  • High sales volumes

  • Highly regulated industries

  • International sales

  • Large number of card-not-present transactions

  • Little to no business experience

  • Long fulfillment time frames

  • New or poor credit scores

  • Past fraud or illegal activity

As high-risk Dating merchant how to find a payment provider?

It takes effort for businesses to secure a payment processing partner when they are considered high-risk but it is definetly possible to find the right payment solution if you focus on:

  • Maintaining healthy cash levels. Most processors would like to see a healthy cash level in your business bank account. 
  • Try to reduce chargebacks. There could be a number of factors behind the soaring number of chargebacks in your business. Whatever the reasons may be, you can always analyze them and try to reduce your chargebacks.
  • Be transparent. Disclose all materials and relevant information during the application process. Payment processors may ask you for very detailed information about your business and finances. Be open, honest, and transparent.
  • Keep your documents ready. This could mean having six months of bank statements and a few years of tax returns. That said, each processor has its own set of requirements so make sure to check them.
  • Follow the guidelines of your payment processor. When you apply for a high-risk payment solution, besides your business needs, the risk the payment solutions provider takes also matters. So, be flexible and see if there are things you can do to reduce your risk by discussing with them and following their recommendations.

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