As far as I can see, those providers who require personal guarantees usually do so as a standard condition for almost any new business. Effectively, they consider everyone's financials to be inadequate.
You want that to be illegal? It's better than those companies not be able to obtain merchant accounts?
Someone would still offer the merchant account services to businesses who could demonstrate a reasonable business plan, because on balance they would make money from doing so. Most new businesses are not, in fact, going to experience a 30% chargeback rate four months after the original sale.
The banks obviously know that, they just want (as usual) to privatise the profits but externalise the risks/losses. I have no problem with prohibiting that kind of predatory behaviour. It's a potentially significant barrier to starting a new business, and with the global economy in its current state, allowing absurdly risk-averse banks to inhibit new businesses is exactly what we shouldn't be doing.
If the banking industry had a track record of assessing its clients responsibly and lending (or not lending) based on the results of those assessments and reasonable assumptions, I would be happy to cut them some slack. But we all know damn well that they aren't doing that. And if governments are going to pressure them just to lend to small businesses, they should certainly pressure them to provide basic services to businesses that are viable without relying on loans as well.
They are already doing it, every time a new business opens an account with them.
No law requires banks to require personal credit checks for merchant accounts.
I'm not talking about credit checks, I'm talking about a personal guarantee, of the "taking your house" variety.
Insisting on personal liability for a corporate account is equivalent to denying the account to the corporation.
Bankers would prefer to have you sign away your first born children too (sounds like something out of Dickens). But we've made such practices illegal and there's no evidence that the money supply is suffering for it.
So maybe the bank is willing to issue the merchant account to the individual with the understanding that it may be used by a corporation. But let's not call it something it isn't.
You might reasonably do a credit check on the principals, since someone running a company who has a track record of bad debts is obviously a warning sign. Likewise you can check them against the databases of people who've been kicked off payment services before.
But in the end, you should be looking at whether a company has a credible business plan and people who are likely to execute it well. That's apparently good enough for other major financial transactions, including attracting investors and things like company credit cards for principals on the day you open a bank account. How come everyone else in the world can use common sense and make an informed judgement about risk, but merchant account providers can't?
