Payment processing for MLM and network marketing companies. Auto-ship continuity, distributor refunds, and a merchant account that does not get pulled mid-campaign.
Stripe, PayPal, and Square all prohibit MLM and network marketing in their restricted-business policies. The fix is a direct merchant account at an acquirer that openly underwrites multi-level and network marketing compensation structures, with auto-ship continuity billing on a tokenized vault and the Amway 70% buyback rule built into the refund flow. We place MLMs at MLM-friendly acquirers in our network with the income disclosure statement and compensation plan reviewed against the FTC business opportunity rule before submission.
Multi-level marketing companies and network marketing programs (also called direct selling, social selling, party plan, or referral marketing) carry every payment-processing headache at once. The customer is also the distributor, so churn looks like a refund request the moment someone quits the program. Auto-ship continuity drives high recurring volume and the friendly-fraud disputes that come with it. FTC scrutiny on income claims and the Amway 70% buyback rule shapes how refund policies have to be written, and a refund policy written wrong is a chargeback the bank will not defend. We board MLMs at acquirers that specialize in the vertical, audit the income disclosure statement and refund policy before submission, run the auto-ship billing on a tokenized vault with smart retry, and build representment evidence packages for distributor-initiated disputes that other processors lose on default.
Multi-level marketing carries every signal a card-brand risk team watches for: continuity auto-ship billing, distributor churn that looks like refund spikes, FTC scrutiny on income claims, and refund-policy complexity from the Amway buyback rule. Generalist processors classify the vertical high-risk on day one and most aggregators prohibit it outright. The fix is a direct merchant account at a bank that underwrites the vertical openly.
In practice, no. Stripe's restricted-business policy lists multi-level marketing as prohibited, and PayPal's user agreement does the same. Some MLMs ship on either for the first 60 to 180 days and then get terminated with reserves held when the model becomes obvious. The structural fix is a direct merchant account at an acquiring bank that openly accepts the vertical.
The refund policy is written to satisfy the Amway 70% buyback rule and any state direct-sales law on the books, and the policy is disclosed at checkout in language the bank will accept. When a distributor disputes a charge after quitting, the representment package includes the policy acknowledgment, the auto-ship terms, the dunning history, and the actual buyback offer made. This wins disputes that would otherwise default to the cardholder.
Supported. Network marketing volume is typically multi-country, so placement goes to acquirers with multi-currency settlement and international card acceptance. International refund and consumer-protection rules vary, so the refund policy is localized at boarding instead of after the first dispute.
Standard merchant packet plus the income disclosure statement, the current compensation plan, the refund and buyback policy, terms of service with auto-ship billing language disclosed, marketing claims compliance review, and last three months of processing statements if any. We pre-review the file before submission to compress the bank's response time.