Corporate banking
Banking an e-commerce business
The bank account is the easy part. The merchant account — the thing that actually takes customer card payments — is a separate application with a separate approval and a much higher failure rate.
The reality
What the bank is actually deciding.
E-commerce companies need two things that get conflated: a corporate bank account to hold money, and a merchant account or payment gateway to accept card payments from customers. They are separate applications, often with separate providers, assessed on different criteria. The bank account is a conventional corporate onboarding. The merchant facility is a credit and fraud assessment, because when a customer disputes a charge the acquirer is exposed if you cannot refund it.
That exposure is what drives everything about merchant onboarding. Acquirers look at the chargeback profile of your product category, the delivery lag between payment and fulfilment, whether you sell subscriptions, and whether the business has a trading history. New merchants in high-chargeback categories are routinely approved with a rolling reserve — a percentage of settlements held back for months — which is a genuine working capital cost that founders rarely model. Long delivery times are the single biggest aggravating factor, which is why dropshipping is among the hardest categories to get approved.
What gets asked for
- Two applications
- Bank account, and merchant or gateway facility
- Assessed on
- Chargeback risk, delivery lag, category, trading history
- Rolling reserve
- Common for new merchants — model it as working capital
- Hardest categories
- Long delivery times, subscriptions, dropshipping
- Site requirements
- Terms, refund policy, contact details, matching licence
- Local gateways
- Telr, PayTabs, Network International, Checkout.com and others
Where the time goes
The file
What to put in front of them.
- Get the licence right for online saleThe activity must cover e-commerce. A general retail licence and an online storefront is an inconsistency the acquirer will find.
- Build the site before applyingAcquirers review it: refund policy, delivery terms, contact details, prices in the stated currency, and an activity that matches the licence.
- Apply for the bank account and the gateway in parallelThey are independent, and the gateway usually takes longer.
- Model the rolling reserveA percentage of revenue withheld for months changes the cash flow of a growing business materially.
- Keep the chargeback rate down from the startEarly chargebacks on a new merchant account are the fastest route to termination.
Related
Questions
Yes. The bank account holds money; the merchant account or gateway accepts card payments. They are separate applications.
A percentage of your settlements held back by the acquirer for a set period to cover potential chargebacks. It is common for new merchants.
Long delivery times mean a large gap between payment and fulfilment, which is where chargebacks come from.
Availability and terms for international providers change; local acquirers and gateways are generally the more reliable route for a UAE-licensed merchant.
One question
Where will the money actually come from?
Then the account is a cross-border file, and the compliance question is which countries and in which currencies. Name the corridors in the application rather than waiting to be asked — an unexplained payment from a jurisdiction the bank did not expect is what freezes accounts in month three.
What the file has to containOr just ask usThen substance is the question rather than geography. A local trading history, an Ejari and a customer list make this straightforward; a flexi-desk with no domestic contracts yet is where onboarding slows, and the fix is evidence rather than a different bank.
Why applications get declinedOr just ask usThen source of wealth carries the file, and 'savings' is not an answer. A share sale agreement, a property disposal, audited accounts from an overseas company or a series of tax returns are. Assemble that before the first meeting, not after the first question.
Evidencing source of fundsOr just ask us