Every application asks for processing history, and a new business does not have any. That is the whole problem in one sentence — and it is worth saying plainly that it is not a rejection reason on its own. Providers open accounts for businesses with no history every week. They just price and document them differently.
A merchant account without processing history is therefore an evidence problem, not a category problem. What history normally proves is that the business is real, that the money comes from where you say it comes from, and that customers do not dispute the charges. With no statements to show, those three things have to be proven some other way — and everything below is that other way.
Contents
- What the provider is actually looking for
- What to bring instead of statements
- What the first months look like
- Which category you land in
- The mistakes that turn «new» into «declined»
- Start smaller, on purpose
- What the first review will look at
- In short
What the provider is actually looking for
Not turnover. Turnover is a proxy. Underneath it there are three questions, and they are the same for a five-year-old company and a five-week-old one.
- Does this business exist as described? A working site, a named legal entity, a reachable human, a product that can be bought.
- Where will the money come from? Which customers, which countries, which average ticket, which payment mix.
- What happens when something goes wrong? Who answers the customer, how refunds work, what the terms say.
Statements answer all three at once, which is why they are asked for first. Without them you answer each one separately — and a file that does so is frequently stronger than a thin set of statements. Why applications get stuck in general is set out in our piece on why merchant accounts are so hard to get.
What to bring instead of statements
Contracts and invoices. Even a handful. Two signed agreements and three issued invoices say more about a real business than a revenue forecast in a slide.
The founders’ own track record. If you ran a similar business before, that history counts even though it is not this legal entity’s. Say so, and be ready to show it.
A payment plan in numbers you chose yourself. Expected monthly turnover, average ticket, share of recurring charges, countries of your customers. Volunteered numbers get verified; withheld ones get questioned.
The complete company set. Registration, articles, beneficiaries, licences where the activity requires them. The full list is in our merchant approval checklist.
A site that matches all of it. This is the item most often sent back, and it is entirely in your hands.
What the first months look like
Expect the terms of a new merchant rather than the terms of a proven one. That normally means the rate sits in the upper part of the published range — MDR runs 3%–5% depending on the type of business, with 0,50 EUR per transaction — a rolling reserve of 10% for 180 days, and settlement at T+7. The exact figure is set per merchant, and we consider individual solutions for your business.
None of that is permanent. It is priced against uncertainty, and uncertainty is exactly what your first clean months remove. What moves the number afterwards is set out in our piece on what card acceptance costs.
All published lines sit on the pricing page.
Which category you land in
New businesses are often surprised to find themselves in a higher band for reasons that have nothing to do with being new: the vertical, the average ticket, the delivery model, cross-border customers. Knowing where you fall before you apply changes how you describe yourself — and it is explained in our piece on what high-risk, middle-risk and low-risk payments are.
The mistakes that turn «new» into «declined»
- Inflating the forecast. A projection that misses by half in month two costs more than a modest one would have. It is checked.
- Describing the business too broadly. «E-commerce» is not a description. The vaguer the wording, the worse the reading of it.
- Hiding a previous attempt. If another provider already declined or closed you, say so and say why. It surfaces during checks anyway.
- Applying with the site half-built. Placeholder pages and dead links are read as a business that is not ready to take money.
- Waiting for «enough» history. There is no threshold to wait for. The file, not the calendar, is what you are missing.
Start smaller, on purpose
A new business with a narrow launch is easier to approve than a broad one: one country, one currency, one product line, a modest expected volume that you then exceed. Growing inside agreed limits is a strong signal; blowing past a declared forecast in week three is not. How the acceptance side is built — routes, retries, settlement — is described under payment processing.
What the first review will look at
Three months in, the file is opened again, and this time there are numbers in it. Four of them decide whether the terms move.
- Did the volume match what you declared? Close is good. Far above is not automatically good.
- What is the dispute ratio? The first real measurement of whether the product matches its description.
- What is the approval rate? A low one points at the checkout or the customer mix, not at the provider.
- Were documents produced on request, quickly? Response time is itself a rating.
In short
No processing history is a gap in evidence, not a verdict. Fill it with contracts, invoices, your own numbers and a complete company file, keep the site consistent with what you claim, and accept new-merchant terms for the first months as the price of being unknown. Two or three clean months later you are no longer unknown — and the merchant account gets repriced on evidence you now have.