Dropshipping fails payment applications for one reason more often than any other, and it is not the model itself. It is that the seller cannot answer what happens between the customer paying and the parcel arriving — because that part belongs to somebody else.
That gap is fixable, and a merchant account for dropshipping is not a rare thing to hold. Providers approve dropshipping stores routinely; what they will not approve is a store that cannot describe its own supply chain. Here is what the review looks at and what makes it go quickly.
Contents
- Why the model is read as elevated risk
- What the application actually asks
- What it costs
- Cutting the disputes this model creates
- Connecting the store
- Scaling without triggering a review
- What to prepare before applying
- In short
Why the model is read as elevated risk
- You do not control delivery. The supplier ships, and the customer’s complaint arrives at you. Every «item not received» dispute is one you have to answer with somebody else’s tracking number.
- Delivery takes longer than the payment. Weeks between the charge and the parcel is normal in this model — and a card payment can be disputed throughout.
- «Not as described» is structural. You are selling from photographs you did not take, of an item you have not held.
- Volume can appear overnight. One advertising campaign turns a quiet store into a spike, and spikes get reviewed.
Which band this puts a business in, and why, is set out in our piece on what high-risk, middle-risk and low-risk payments are.
What the application actually asks
The company set is standard. The part that decides the outcome is your supply side, and it is the part most applications leave vague.
- Who your suppliers are. Named, with an agreement — not a marketplace account you log into.
- Realistic delivery times. The ones your customers actually experience, not the optimistic figure on the product page. The mismatch between these two is the most common single reason a dropshipping file goes back.
- Who answers the customer. Support hours, channels, and who chases the supplier when a parcel goes missing.
- Your refund policy, matching the checkout. Including who pays return shipping when the item never left.
- A working store. Real product pages, real prices, real contact details, no placeholder text.
The rest of the file is the same as anywhere; the list is in our merchant approval checklist.
What it costs
MDR runs 3%–5% depending on the type of business, plus 0,50 EUR per transaction. Settlement in EUR over SEPA is 0,20%, the term is T+7, and the rolling reserve is 10% for 180 days — a share of turnover held back against future disputes and released on schedule. A refund costs 50,00 EUR and a chargeback 100,00 EUR on top of the amount returned. The exact figure is set per merchant and we consider individual solutions for your business.
In dropshipping the reserve deserves modelling before the rate does, because your suppliers are usually paid before your settlement arrives. Working capital, not the percentage, is what decides whether a campaign can be scaled. What the whole picture looks like is in our piece on what card acceptance costs.
All published lines sit on the pricing page.
Cutting the disputes this model creates
- Publish the honest delivery window. A store promising three days and delivering in twenty generates disputes at a rate no anti-fraud setting can offset.
- Send tracking the day it exists, and again if it changes. Silence between payment and parcel is where a customer decides to call the bank instead of you.
- Put a recognisable name in the descriptor. A store brand the customer just bought from, not the legal entity behind it.
- Answer faster than the bank does. Disputing takes two minutes in an app; if your reply takes three days you lose by default.
- Refund the marginal cases. Fifty euros beats a hundred, and a refund does not count against your dispute ratio the way a chargeback does.
Connecting the store
Ready plugins cover WordPress and OpenCart; anything else connects through the API or a payment link. What sits behind the plugin — gateway, routes, retries, settlement — is described under payment processing.
The money lands in an account in the company’s name, described under business IBAN.
Scaling without triggering a review
Growth is not a problem; unannounced growth is. Tell the provider before a campaign multiplies your volume, and tell them when you add a supplier country or a product category well outside what you described. A declared change is planning, an undeclared one is an anomaly — and anomalies are what pause accounts.
What to prepare before applying
- Supplier agreements, not screenshots. A signed document with a named counterparty answers a question a marketplace login cannot.
- Your real delivery statistics. Median days to arrival for the last few months, by supplier. If you do not have it, that itself is the finding.
- A refund policy you can actually execute. Including the case where the supplier never shipped and the money has already been paid forward.
- The support process written down. Who answers, in how long, and what they are allowed to decide without escalating.
In short
Dropshipping is approved on the strength of its supply story: named suppliers, honest delivery windows, a support process that answers before the bank does, and a refund policy that matches the checkout. Model the reserve before the rate, keep the descriptor recognisable, and announce growth in advance. Then the merchant account is an ordinary product with terms that reflect a real, describable risk.