Bitcoin Merchant Services and Accounts

What does a merchant account add?

A gateway is a technical service. A merchant account is the agreement around it, and the difference shows up when something goes wrong rather than during integration.

The agreement decides your settlement schedule, whether a reserve is held against your balance and for how long, what happens to funds if the provider decides to review your account, and which business activities you are permitted to conduct. Those terms rarely appear on a pricing page. They appear in the contract, which is why the questions worth asking are contractual rather than technical.

How does underwriting differ from card processing?

Card underwriting is largely about dispute risk. An acquirer prices you on the probability that your customers will file chargebacks, because the acquirer carries that liability.

Crypto acceptance removes that mechanism. A confirmed payment does not reverse, so the provider is not exposed to your dispute ratio at all. What remains is compliance risk: whether your business creates an obligation the provider does not want, and whether the money reaching you can be explained to its own banking partners.

That shifts the questions. Rather than your chargeback history, expect to be asked about your customer base, your jurisdiction, your source of goods, and how you handle refunds. The verification guide covers what each provider publishes. It is a shorter process than card underwriting in most cases and a stricter one on business model.

Which providers underwrite which verticals?

Each card in this index lists the verticals a provider names on its own public pages. That is a weaker statement than an underwriting decision and stronger than a guess, and it is the most any catalogue can verify without applying.

The pattern across the category is consistent. US-domiciled providers decline the widest range of verticals. European providers sit in the middle. Providers built around iGaming volume accept the most and charge accordingly. If your vertical is refused by one type, the switching pages are organised around exactly that case.

What should you get in writing?

The payout schedule and the reserve percentage, as numbers rather than as ranges. The hold period on a reviewed account. What happens to a balance if the relationship ends. Which activities void the agreement.

None of those appear on a pricing page anywhere in this category, and all four decide whether the relationship is workable. Ask them together, on the same day, of every provider on your shortlist. The full catalogue is the place to build that shortlist from.