Blue Wave Merchant Solutions Review

“High risk” businesses include those in industries such as adult entertainment, smoke and vape shops, firearms, travel, tech support, fantasy sports, and more. If you’ve tried to secure a merchant account only to be turned away as “high risk” you’ll need high risk credit card processing. Blue Wave claims a 95% approval rate for such accounts.

While the company can support many businesses, there are a few that it specifically excludes. That includes:

• Gambling
• Airlines
• Adoption Agencies
• Nutra Trial
• Merchants on the Terminated Merchant File (MATCH list)
• Third Party Processors
• Illegal Products

Here’s what the company has to say in its own words:

Blue Wave Merchant Solutions offers credit card processing solutions for various types of businesses with a special focus on those labeled high risk. We understand that many legitimate small businesses have trouble getting merchant accounts because they don’t fit a traditional business model, so we work hard to get those accounts approved. Our experts have over a decade of experience providing hard to place merchants with a secure credit card processing home.

Blue Wave offers competitive rates with no application or setup fees. We want to see your business flourish, which is why our high risk merchant accounts allow you to process payments within days and we happily offer advice on how to maintain your merchant account and mitigate your chargeback ratio. With our 95% approval rate and the proper documentation from your business, we can get your account approved in as little as 1-2 business days.

Let’s take a look at what you can expect for services, costs, and more when working with Blue Wave.

• Credit Card Processing
  • Paying Fees and Receiving Funds
  • Pricing Models
• Blue Wave Merchant Solutions Rates and Fees
• Chargebacks and Security
• Working Capital
• Equipment
• Blue Wave Merchant Solutions Reviews

Credit Card Processing

Blue Wave offers credit card processing for both in-person and online businesses. The company can provide traditional countertop credit card machines, POS systems, or online gateways to accept payments through an ecommerce website. It can also support pay-at-the-pump gas stations (though it may not support all specialty gas station processing equipment, such as Ruby systems) and allows you to accept fleet cards such as WEX and Voyager.

The company uses independent sales agents to sell merchant accounts, and tells CardFellow that those agents must follow best practices. They’re also required to abide by company-set terms and pricing guidelines to help ensure consistency and good service.

Paying Fees and Receiving Funds

With Blue Wave, you’ll pay your processing fees on a daily basis. The company primarily offers what’s called “daily discounting,” meaning they’ll collect processing fees from you daily instead of once per month. This means that they’ll deduct your processing fees from the transaction amounts and deposit the net transaction amount in your account.

The company offers next-day deposits at no additional charge. In order to receive funds the next day, you’ll need to “batch” your transactions by 5pm Eastern time.

Pricing Models

We talk about pricing model a lot here at CardFellow because it’s one of the most important components to whether you get a competitive and transparent solution or an expensive and opaque solution.

Blue Wave doesn’t limit itself to one particular pricing model, instead offering interchange plus, tiered, and flat rate style pricing. Some industries may not be eligible for all types of pricing. However, if you have the choice, remember that interchange plus it the most transparent, and sets the stage for the most competitive pricing. Just don’t mistake it for a silver bullet for low processing fees, because you can still get gouged on interchange plus.

That said, for industries that are very high risk, you’ll likely only be eligible for tiered pricing. There are still ways to secure a fair, honest tiered pricing solution, it will just require a bit more work. If you need help evaluating your options, you can request a quote right through this profile.

Be sure to check out our article on high risk merchant accounts, or read up on credit card processing pricing models.

Blue Wave Merchant Solutions Rates and Fees

Okay, so the big question that businesses always want to know: “How much will it cost?” However, there’s no single answer to that. Blue Wave, like most processors, set pricing individually for each business. Especially in high risk, the business’s individual needs, volume, industry, and other details will affect the final costs.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t see real numbers. That’s where CardFellow comes in. Sign in to your free CardFellow account to request a quote from Blue Wave. Once they provide a quote, you’ll have the ability to review it privately (no sales calls!) and compare it to other quotes you request. Our system keeps them all in one place for you, allowing easy side-by-side comparison with real quotes.

Don’t have a CardFellow account yet? Signing up takes 2 minutes and there’s no cost to you. Sign up now!

Chargebacks and Security

These days, chargebacks are a big concern for many businesses. For high risk, it’s even more important that you minimize chargebacks whenever possible.

Blue Wave will notify you by mail and email if you receive a chargeback. You can also review it on your merchant account dashboard. The company also offers optional enrollment with services like Verifi and Kount to help fight chargebacks.

You can also enable anti-fraud tools to reduce the risk of fraudulent transactions. Anti-fraud features include services like AVS, 3D Secure, and more.

In terms of security, Blue Wave offers assistance with PCI compliance requirements to help ensure businesses are taking cards in the most secure way possible. If you’re not in compliance, you may receive a non-compliance fee. However, Blue Wave will notify you of non-compliance and provide a chance to become compliant before charging that fee.

The company also requires data breach protection, which costs $10 per month.

Working Capital

Blue Wave also offers working capital, or merchant cash advances. A merchant cash advance is a little different than a traditional loan, because there’s no percentage interest rate, and you repay daily. Once you take a cash advance, you’ll repay through a portion of your daily credit card sales, which will be automatically deducted.

In order to qualify for working capital, you need to be in business for at least 3 months and process at least $2,500 per month in credit card sales. You can borrow between $2,500 and $1,000,000 depending on your specific business profile. There’s no minimum personal credit scored required to apply.

Equipment

Blue Wave supports several universal credit card terminals and online gateways, which is great. That means that if you need to switch processors in the future, you’ll be able to continue using the equipment or gateway you’ve already set up.

The company supports popular Ingenico and Verifone credit card machines and the Authorize.Net, USAePay, NMI, or ChargeAnywhere gateways. It also supports Clover POS systems, with the company saying that the ease of use of Clover and Verifone in particular make them good options for businesses.

Blue Wave Merchant Solutions Reviews

Perhaps due to its young age (the company was founded in 2016), Blue Wave doesn’t have much in the way of online reviews. It does provide a selection of customer testimonials through a “What people are saying” widget on its website. In those testimonials, customers praise Blue Wave’s customer service for helping get the best rates, assisting with gateway setup, providing resources to keep chargebacks down, and providing processing when no other company would.

Blue Wave has no Google reviews, nor did we find reviews on the BBB website, Facebook, or Yelp.

Of course, credit card processor reviews can be misleading anyway, so it’s not a dealbreaker that Blue Wave doesn’t have any on independent sites. Even if it had glowing 5 star reviews, there’s no guarantee you’d get the same pricing and terms as the business who left the review.

This is particularly true in high risk processing, which is very business-specific.

Instead, why not request a quote from Blue Wave through your CardFellow account to review real numbers and compare the pricing to other companies? If you don’t have a CardFellow account yet, it takes just 2 minutes, and it’s completely free with no obligation at any point. Sign up now!