Document Preparation Merchant Account: How Notary and Document Services Accept Payments Online

If you operate a document or notary service company and would like to accept online payments without using an online payment application, then this guide may be of interest to you.

Specifically, this article will cover merchant accounts for the following types of companies and service providers:

• document preparation companies
• mobile notaries
• remote online notaries
• loan signing agents
• immigration document preparation services
• legal document typing services
• business filing and form preparation companies
• tax document and administrative support providers
• notary offices
• document services that offer invoices, links to accept payments, or use virtual terminals

If your company requires clients to pay before you can complete their documents, after a consultation, during the booking of their appointment, or over the phone, then you will need to have your payment software and merchant account set up accordingly.

The best payment mix depends on how the service is sold, how large the fee is and whether the client pays online, in person or over the phone.

Most document preparation businesses benefit from offering both card payments and ACH. Cards make payment easier for clients, while ACH can be useful for higher-value invoices or repeat business clients.

Provider fit depends on business model, online workflow, document category, average ticket, chargeback history, whether services are legal-adjacent and whether the company needs card-present, card-not-present or ACH payments.

Payment Nerds is usually the strongest fit when the business wants help matching merchant account structure, payment methods, gateway tools and documentation practices to the real document-preparation workflow. Self-serve tools may work for simple local notary payments, but more complex document services often benefit from a clearer underwriting path.

Visa’s own VAMP is a combined program for monitoring fraud and disputed transactions on its Visa account holders’ accounts. The VAMP ratio for Visa accounts is calculated as the number of fraud and non-fraud disputes divided by the number of settled Visa transactions. TC40 is the number of reports of fraud for Visa accounts, while TC15 is the number of Visa accounts that are involved in disputes.

While not usually the first issue a small-business notary considers, VAMP can affect companies that accept online, keyed, or high-volume Visa card payments. These disputes can affect the payment company’s confidence in the document service that accepts payments.

Another component of VAMP is the enumeration monitoring program for Visa accounts. Enumeration monitors for bots that are attempting to test Visa cards on a company’s payment or keyed data entry pages. The enumeration ratio for a company’s Visa accounts is the number of suspected card-testing attempts divided by the total number of authorization attempts on those accounts. VAAI, or Visa Account Attack Intelligence, is the score that Visa uses to detect enumeration attacks on company websites. Any score above Standard or Excessive indicates to Visa that a company is experiencing these attack issues and may be subject to fees and further scrutiny.

For document services, VAMP is best avoided by proper billing and by protecting payment pages for customers. Properly describing invoices and refund policies, as well as using fraud-detection and documentation software, can reduce instances of VAMP and disputes involving Visa accounts.

Start with the actual service model that you provide. If you are a company that takes small in-person payments for in-person notary services, you’ll have a very different requirement than if you are an online company that accepts document preparation fees from invoices.

Consider where you operate – whether you are remote and online-only or whether you offer in-person services.

Review each company’s capabilities for approval fit, ACH support, virtual terminal access, gateway compatibility, card-present and card-not-present fees, invoice software, deposit and refund features, and security compliance. The best merchant account provider for document preparation companies will understand the differences between notary and document preparation company workflows.

Merchant account costs for document preparation businesses include fees for credit and debit card processing, ACH transactions, monthly payments, payment gateways, virtual terminals, chargebacks, PCI security, card readers and mobile POS hardware (and possibly add-on fraud or reporting software).

Higher costs may apply if the business is considered higher risk – due to legal services, need for online orders, higher order values, chargebacks or a history of terminated service agreements. Instead, the question is whether the merchant account software will effectively manage payments as the business expands its online orders.

The biggest mistake is accepting online payments but not providing a description of the services you’ll provide. If your customer does not know what they’re paying for, when you’ll start providing the services, and under what conditions they can get a refund, there’s a high chance the payment will be disputed.

Using payment applications for personal use or manually processing clients’ cards is another mistake to avoid. While these methods may be convenient for conducting a few transactions for friends or family, they will create problems when the payment processor reviews your account.