Your account was closed. The next 48 hours matter most.
A terminated account means three separate problems: money you cannot access, a business that cannot take payments, and possibly a listing that blocks you for five years. They need handling in that order.
What this page settles.
Three questions, in the order most people ask them.
The first 48 hours
A terminated merchant account is three separate problems arriving together, and treating them as one is how people make it worse.
You cannot take payments. Urgent, and the easiest to solve.
Your money may be held. Important, slow, and mostly a matter of persistence.
You may be listed on MATCH. Not urgent today and the one that determines the next five years.
Do them in that order, with one addition at the top: ask why, in writing, immediately. Everything else depends on the answer, and the answer gets harder to obtain as time passes and the account closes down.
What not to do in the first 48 hours: start applying to new processors without knowing whether you were listed. An application that does not disclose a termination, from a business that was listed, gets declined and adds a second data point against you.
Finding out why
Ask the terminating party, in writing, for three things:
The reason for termination, as specifically as they will state it.
Whether you have been listed on MATCH, and if so under which reason code.
The release schedule for any held funds.
Send that as an email so there is a record. Be factual rather than aggrieved; you are asking for information from people who deal with angry merchants all day, and the polite version gets answered.
The common reasons, roughly in order:
Chargeback ratio. Breaching a card network monitoring threshold, or heading toward one. Chargeback monitoring programs.
A volume or pattern change that triggered risk review — a sudden spike, an unusually large transaction, a shift in average ticket.
A category or product issue. Something you sell falls outside the acquirer’s appetite, sometimes discovered later than it should have been.
A mismatch with the application. You were underwritten as one business and are trading as another, or volumes are far above the stated limits.
Fraud indicators, including from your customers rather than from you.
Something administrative. An unresolved compliance item, an unverifiable document, an unpaid balance. These are the easiest to fix and are a real share of terminations.
Your money
Expect funds to be held, and expect the hold to be longer than feels reasonable.
Why: the acquirer remains liable for chargebacks on transactions you have already taken, and those can arrive for months. Holding your balance is how they cover that. It is not punitive and it is in the agreement. Held funds and reserves.
How long: commonly 90 to 180 days, covering the chargeback window. Some arrangements release in stages.
What to do:
Get the release schedule in writing and diarise the dates. Funds do not always release automatically and a polite email on the due date is often what triggers it.
Keep the bank account open. Closing it complicates the release and leaves fees and late chargebacks with nowhere to settle.
Keep responding to disputes during the hold. Every one you win reduces what they need to hold.
Do not assume the money is gone. Most held balances are released. The process is slow, not dishonest.
Your data
Do this today, because access disappears when the account closes rather than when the notice arrives.
Export your transaction history — a full export, not a summary. You will need it for accounting, for disputes still in flight, and for a new application.
Export your customer records.
Establish what happens to stored card tokens. If you have cards on file for recurring billing, the tokens belong to the gateway and may not be portable. This is frequently the most damaging practical consequence of a termination for a subscription business, and the window to ask is now. Tokenization and P2PE.
Save the termination notice and all correspondence. You will be asked about this by every processor you approach.
The MATCH question
MATCH — the Member Alert to Control High-Risk Merchants, sometimes still called the TMF — is the card networks’ shared file of terminated merchants. Acquirers check it before approving an account.
A listing lasts five years from the listing date and then drops off automatically. During that window most acquirers will decline on sight. The MATCH list, in full.
Not every termination results in a listing. An account closed for an administrative reason, or closed by you, generally does not. One closed for excessive chargebacks or fraud generally does.
Only the listing acquirer can remove it early. If you believe the listing is wrong — a mistaken reason code, a dispute that was resolved, a termination you were not responsible for — write to them, state the facts, and ask for removal. It happens, and it requires evidence rather than argument.
Find out either way. A business that does not know whether it was listed cannot plan, and will waste weeks on applications that were never going to be approved.
Getting processing again
Two timescales.
Immediately, so the business keeps trading. An aggregator — Square, Stripe, PayPal, SumUp — has no underwriting up front and can have you live in minutes. Be aware of two things: they will run their own checks eventually, and a MATCH listing may surface later and lead to a second closure. It buys you time, which is what you need. Merchant account versus aggregator.
Properly, over weeks. Three routes depending on the MATCH answer:
Not listed: apply normally, and disclose the previous termination. Underwriters find out anyway, and a disclosed termination with an explanation is a conversation while an undisclosed one is a decline. The application.
Listed, with the underlying problem fixed: a high-risk specialist will often board a listed merchant at higher rates, with a rolling reserve and lower limits. More expensive and it is processing. High risk explained.
Listed, wrongly: pursue removal with the listing acquirer in parallel with everything else.
And fix what caused it, because the next account will be watched more closely. If it was chargebacks, that work starts now: descriptor, delivery evidence, pre-dispute alerts, response discipline. Preventing chargebacks.
What we charge
Interchange + 0.50% + 10¢ in person, interchange + 0.75% + 25¢ keyed, with no contract, no monthly fee and no monthly minimum.
If you have been terminated, send us the notice. We will tell you what the reason means, whether a listing is likely, and what a realistic path back looks like — including when the honest answer is that you need a high-risk specialist rather than us. That conversation costs nothing and it is better had early.
While we are on the subject
Can a processor close my account without warning?
Yes. Merchant agreements generally permit termination at the acquirer’s discretion, sometimes immediately where risk is involved. Notice is often brief and after the fact.
Will I get my held funds back?
Usually, after a holding period that covers the chargeback window — commonly 90 to 180 days. Ask for the release schedule in writing and diarise it.
How do I know if I am on MATCH?
Ask the terminating acquirer directly, in writing, whether you were listed and under which reason code. They should tell you. A new processor will also find out when they run the check.
Can I just open a new account somewhere else?
If you were not listed, usually yes. If you were, most acquirers will decline, and the honest route is a high-risk specialist or resolving the listing with the party that made it.