Payment Resources for Merchants
Everything we publish, grouped by the question it answers. The guides explain how the parts of a payment stack fit together, the country, licence and payment-method pages cover the specifics that decide an application, the problem pages deal with what has already gone wrong, and the calculators work out the numbers an application asks for. Nothing here names a provider or promises approval: that decision belongs to the provider that underwrites you.
Browse by area
Guides (9)
Plain explanations of how card payments actually work: what a PSP does, what an acquirer decides, chargeback ratios, reserves and merchant category codes.
Industries (8)
What underwriting focuses on in a specific sector, from iGaming and forex to subscriptions and travel, and which questions come up first.
Countries (3)
How the country your company is registered in affects card acceptance, settlement and the local payment methods your customers expect.
Licences (2)
What common authorisations permit, what they do not cover, and how each one changes the questions asked during payment underwriting.
Payment methods (3)
How each method works for a merchant: authorisation, finality, refunds, recurring support and what it means for your dispute figures.
Merchant problems (6)
Practical pages for the situations merchants write to us about: account closed, disputes too high, reserve requested, documents asked for again.
Tools & calculators (4)
Free calculators for chargeback ratio, rolling reserve and processing cost, plus a merchant category code lookup. No sign-up, nothing stored.
How Ecompayer works
What happens after an assessment, what we can and cannot tell you, and who decides whether an application is approved.
Where to start
If you are setting up card payments for the first time, start with the guides: what a PSP does, what an acquiring bank decides, and what a merchant account actually is. Those three answer most of what an application later assumes you know.
If you already process and something has gone wrong, go to the merchant problem pages. They are written for one situation each, so you can read the one that matches yours instead of a general article.
If you are comparing offers, the calculators are the fastest route to a comparable number: an effective cost per payment, a dispute ratio on the same period, or the amount a reserve would hold back on your own volume.
Not sure which of these applies to you?
Answer four questions about your business and see what your payment profile looks like before you speak to anyone. No account needed to see the result.
Check my payment optionsNothing is shared with a provider until you submit your onboarding pack. Approval is always the provider's decision.