FTC To Payment Processor: You Are Liable For The Google Money Tree, A $15 Million Dollar Scam.

As more and more startups race to be payment processors, the FTC (US Federal Trade Commission) is racing to hold payment processors 100% liable for the activities of the merchants they process for. This is a huge responsibility shift that is already having a financial impact on some startups.

This FTC ruling fully aligns far more monitoring of products/services sold, no matter how much money is involved. The FTC will not hold harmless any party to the transaction and this can impact many business plans of dozens of payment startups and legacy companies. This part of the official press release of the FTC ruling casts a clear shadow on anyone processing payments:

The complaint against Process America alleges that the defendants knew or should have known that they were processing charges that consumers had not authorized. Evidence that consumers were being charged without their permission included plainly deceptive statements on merchant websites, notices that the merchant should be placed in Visa and MasterCard chargeback monitoring programs, and chronically excessive chargeback rates – the percentage of charge ...