Humboldt Merchant Services

An adult merchant account provider based in Tempe

Humboldt Merchant Services is a merchant account provider for businesses that acquiring banks treat as hard to place, and its adult page names adult content websites and livestream services among the merchants it takes on. The pages give its address as Tempe, Arizona, and date its card processing to 1992. The footer identifies the company as 5967 Ventures, LLC, doing business as Humboldt Merchant Services, and describes the brand as a registered ISO of BMO Harris N.A. in Chicago. It adds that Humboldt is a registered DBA of EPX, which is itself a registered ISO of BMO Harris Bank N.A. and FFB Bank in Fresno, California.

For a site operator the relevant product is card acceptance for a paysite, a subscription tube, a cam or livestream service or an online store, sold together with a gateway, chargeback tooling and an underwriting team the company runs itself. The adult page is blunt about why the category is difficult: acquiring banks cite higher chargeback ratios, a larger share of subscription payments, fraud risk, age restrictions, the number of regulations to meet and reputational risk.

What Humboldt sells an operator

The core offer is a merchant account for card-not-present business, with Visa, Mastercard, Discover and Amex accepted and debit accepted through US debit networks. The homepage says Humboldt gives access to 2 in-house payment gateways built for hard-to-place merchants, and the adult page says the gateway lets the company oversee the whole transaction process. A retail line (in-store, mobile and EMV) also exists, though it matters less to a web operator.

The gateway page lists what the platform includes:

• risk management tools and dynamic descriptors
• automated chargeback processing and reporting
• end-to-end tokenization
• hosted checkout pages and hosted payment forms
• ready-to-use APIs for recurring billing and subscriptions
• intelligent transaction routing
• support for 3D-Secure merchant plug-ins
• integration with third-party CRM solutions such as Nats, Infusionsoft and CartConnect
• a software development kit for app developers
• full white label support

Recurring billing gets its own page. Customer payment details are converted to a tokenized BRIC so that later charges run on a schedule, and the in-house gateway handles both recurring card payments and ACH. The page also mentions optional add-ons, discounts and billing cycles that can be adjusted as revenue grows. Multi-currency conversion is listed on the About page and on the homepage, a point that matters for a site selling to visitors outside the United States.

The merchant portal reports on sales, approvals and chargebacks, and the data can be split by date range, currency, region and card type. Humboldt says it can match a chargeback to its original transaction at once, and that the portal lets a merchant accept, reject or submit a chargeback with configurable notifications and uploaded supporting documents, with reduced adjudication timeframes. Third-party integrations named on the page are QuickBooks, Auth.net and USAePay.

Chargebacks and Fraudcast

Fraudcast is Humboldt's chargeback and fraud reduction tool. Once processing starts, 3 new folders appear each day in the MoveIt merchant portal: one for chargebacks and cardholder disputes from the previous business day, one for transactions Visa marked fraudulent and one for transactions Mastercard marked fraudulent. The merchant can download or delete the files, and can upload documents for any chargeback it wants to dispute. Email alerts arrive Monday through Friday, and an empty folder simply means nothing was reported that day.

Terms that decide the choice

There is no merchant content policy on the site. The adult page frames acceptance as a question of paperwork: selling adult products or services does not rule out approval, but the applicant will likely be asked for a little more documentation on finances and processing history, so the processor can be comfortable with the risk. The homepage says that as long as a business is legal and based in the United States, chances are Humboldt can help, and announces processing for 40 new verticals. The pages set out no record-keeping or age-verification duties for merchants, although the adult page lists age restrictions among the reasons banks treat the category as hard to place.

On cost, the FAQ describes the structure and no amounts. Every merchant pays a monthly minimum fee, a statement fee, and a discount rate and authorization fee on every transaction, and monthly fees vary with the type of account. Specific fees are set out in the merchant's agreement, which the FAQ calls the Merchant Bankcard Agreement and the website terms call the Merchant Processing Agreement. Monthly fees are debited from the business checking account in the first week of each month for the previous month's transactions. Hardware is covered by a separate Free Equipment Placement Agreement, according to the website terms.

The pages are silent on several points an adult operator would ask about: rates, rolling reserves, chargeback fees, settlement and payout timing, contract length and early termination, and DMCA or content-abuse handling. The text of the agreements is not on the public pages, so those questions go to the sales team. The homepage and About page call the pricing highly competitive, which is a claim and not a published rate.

Getting started and support

Applying starts with a form or a phone call. A specialist explains the documents needed, and the homepage names bank and merchant processing statements as examples. Humboldt's in-house Risk and Underwriting departments review the file. The company says approvals for hard-to-place accounts tend to take a little longer, and that once all documents are supplied the process should take only a few days. A page on in-house services adds that the company will talk to merchants who have been turned down before.

Support is also in-house. The About page lists customer inquiries, statement questions, chargeback postings and representments, and the in-house services page describes a boutique-style approach where a merchant knows the name of the person to call. The FAQ gives customer service by phone from 7am-5pm PST, plus fax and email, and explains how to reorder terminal and printer supplies. Technical support and customer care sit in the same company as underwriting.

Company and track record

Humboldt says it opened in 1992 and describes more than 25 years in card processing, with a reference to 3 decades elsewhere. It claims tens of thousands of merchants served since then. The company is headquartered in Tempe, Arizona. A Sales Partners page recruits agents and lists adult content among the industries the company specializes in, offering them chargeback reporting, multi-currency conversion and anti-fraud services to bring to their own clients. The website terms are issued by NorthAB, LLC, with an address in Troy, Michigan, and Michigan law governs them. The pages do not explain how that company relates to the Tempe brand.

Who it suits

Under high-risk merchant accounts, Humboldt covers card acceptance for specialty merchants that include adult content sites, with underwriting done in-house and a stated turnaround of a few days once paperwork is in. Under adult payment processors, the useful pieces are the gateway features built around subscriptions (tokenization, recurring billing, dynamic descriptors, routing and 3D-Secure support) and the daily chargeback files from Fraudcast.

It fits an established paysite, cam service or subscription tube that can document its financials and processing history, is based in the United States, and wants one company for the account, the gateway and chargeback response. It fits less well a brand-new site with no processing history, an operator outside the United States, or anyone who needs to compare published rates and reserve terms before a first call, since none appear on the pages. Its strength is the combination: 3 decades in the business, underwriting and support under one roof, and a chargeback workflow that opens with a daily report on the previous business day's disputes.