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How can I accept credit cards for my buisness if I have bad credit and can't get a merchant acct.?

I have my own small buisness(salon booth renter) and I need to be able to accept credit cards but the merchant for the bank the salon uses wont approve me even with co signer. Is there another way I could accept credit cards? Like should I try another bank than the one my salon uses like maybe my personal bank which is a credit union, do you think it makes a difference?

Public Comments

1. I have a machine & account. All you have to do is take over payments, which is like $45.00 a month. My business went under so I need to get rid of it asap. Thanks.
2. The first problem you have is that yo are going to a bank. The reason i say this is a bank does not handle merchant account. The are just the middle man and have different policy for merchant accounts. You want to go to a merchant services company to get an account. Why this is important to you is because of your business type. You are a hair salon and this one of the easiest accounts to get approved. I had answered a similar question early so I pasted part of the answer here. 2nd options is opening a merchant account. These types of account is for retail locations, over the phone orders and ecommerce. This system is very fast, run a card and within seconds the customer is either approved or decline and then on to the next one. The pros are that you are protected against chargebacks, you receive your money in1-2 days and you have complete control over you account. The cons are it may cost a little more upfront for equipment but most companies can offer inexpensive equipment or possible free. As far as credit score go, merchant services companies are just like any other finance company. Some have very strict policies and some not so strict. Working in the merchant services industry myself I know certain companies that won't touch anything under a 650. On the other hand I know of companies that have a min required score of 500. The nice thing about this is that unlike a finance company which will charge you more because of poor credit, merchant services companies do not. It is either you are approved or not, but you still receive the same price(% rate) regardless of credit score. The last thing is, it also depends on what type of business you have (restaurant, gas station, hair salon, etc) certain companies have an automatic approval policy based simply on the business type. Which means if you business type falls into certain "preferred business type" you will be automatically approved regardless of credit. In the industry we know certain types of companies work better and have less issues than other. To give you an example, if you are a restaurant and go into a bank and try to get a loan, 9-10 banks won't even look at you. However in the merchant services industry if you want an account you will be approved 99.9 out of a 100 times. A merchant services account is just an open line of credit, just like a loan. If i had a little more info I would be able to give you exact details. Hope that this helped. If you need any more info don't hesitate to ask or email me.