Explicit or suggestive imagery
Profile grids that read as a gallery. Watermarked preview content. “Verified local singles” laid out as merchandise. Underwriting looks at the homepage the way an ad reviewer would.
01 / DATING
Dating merchant accounts, without the guesswork.
We match dating sites and apps with processors whose underwriting actually fits the business - the billing model, the traffic sources, the checkout. Then we walk you through the application, the pricing, the reserve and the contract terms.
Free to use · Team responds ASAP · We’re paid by the processor, not you.
The short version
- A dating merchant account is a high-risk account. The risk isn’t that people meet on your site - it’s how you charge them, where the subscribers come from, and what your pages look like when an underwriter reads them.
- MCC 7273 is the code for dating and escort services, and Visa slots it into Tier 1 of its High-Integrity Risk category. Your acquirer has to register you with Visa before the first transaction runs. That registration is the acquirer’s job, and the delay is yours.
- The billing model is the file. Straight subscription, free-trial-to-paid, credit packs and rebill retries are four different underwriting problems, and most processors price them four different ways.
- Expect card rates of 2.5% to 6%, per-transaction fees of $0.10 to $0.35, and a rolling reserve of 5% to 10% of volume held for 90 to 180 days.
- Free trials are the hardest offer to place. Visa’s rules expect a reminder at least 7 days before the first paid charge; Mastercard’s expect one 3 to 7 days before the trial ends, unless the trial runs seven days or less.
- Mainstream matchmaking and adult-adjacent platforms are different files. Your imagery, your copy and your ad creative are the evidence that decides which one you are.
- Affiliate traffic and rebill retries are the two questions underwriters ask last and weigh most.
- We’re free to use. We’re paid by the processor when a merchant we match starts processing.
02 / WHY DATING GETS DECLINED
Why dating sites get declined.
Most dating founders who get turned down assume the product is the problem. It usually isn’t. Matchmaking is a legal, mainstream business that has been processing cards for twenty years. What gets a dating file declined is a set of billing and traffic patterns that banks have learned to price as high risk - and those patterns show up in the same four places almost every time.
Recurring subscription billing. The moment you charge a card more than once, you stop being an ordinary ecommerce merchant and become a negative-option merchant. The subscriber authorized one charge at sign-up, and every charge after it runs on that original consent. Card network rules are specific about how recurring charges are disclosed, described on the statement and cancelled, and an auto-renew dispute is the most common complaint pattern in the category. A $29.99 monthly subscription that quietly renews for eight months before the member notices is a $240 chargeback, not a $30 one. That arithmetic is what underwriting runs before it quotes you.
Free-trial-to-paid conversion. A free trial, a $1 trial, or a “just pay for the profile boost” offer is the same problem sharpened. It converts far better than a straight subscription - which is exactly why it attracts risk. The member takes something for free, loses interest, and disputes the first real charge several weeks later, often having deleted the app. Underwriters treat trial-to-paid as its own risk class, not as a variant of subscription billing, because the offer depends on people not noticing something.
Affiliate traffic. Affiliate-sourced subscribers are a different population from organic or paid-search sign-ups. You didn’t write the promise the member clicked, you may not know the placement it appeared on, and the creative that converted them might be a page you’ve never seen. When those members dispute, the complaint often isn’t about your product at all - it’s about a claim made three steps upstream of your checkout. Processors know this pattern, and an affiliate-heavy funnel gets scrutinized harder than the same revenue earned from your own channels. We give this its own section below.
Chargeback exposure from involuntary churn. A dating subscriber rarely wakes up and decides to cancel. They stop logging in, the renewal fires, and the charge sits on a statement for a month before they do anything about it. Some fraction of them call the bank rather than the cancellation page, because calling the bank is easier. Involuntary churn - failed payments, expired cards, dunning attempts and the eventual dispute - is where a dating account bleeds. It’s also the reason processors ask for your retry logic before they ask for your volume.
So the processor isn’t asking “is dating legal.” It’s asking “can I underwrite this specific business - this billing model, this traffic mix, this checkout, this geography - at a price that covers the risk.” A lot of processors can’t. The ones that can are the ones we work with.
The decline reasons we see most often:
- 01The processor has no dating policy. The site says “high risk,” but the acquiring bank underneath it has never boarded an MCC 7273 merchant and won’t start with yours. The application dies at the bank, not at the processor.
- 02Visa registration wasn’t done. Tier 1 registration for dating and escort services is a prerequisite, not a formality. A file that starts processing before registration clears is a file that gets flagged.
- 03The billing model was described as something simpler than it is. The application says “subscription.” The checkout sells a $1 trial that converts to $39.99 a month and adds a credit pack at step three. That’s a different category, and the mismatch ends the conversation.
- 04Traffic sources arrived without the whole story. “Mostly organic” that turns out to be 60% affiliate redirect traffic is the fastest way to lose a file you’d already won.
- 05Chargeback history that surfaced during underwriting instead of being disclosed upfront. Rate is arguable. Concealment isn’t.
- 06Geography and currencies the file can’t account for. Worldwide sign-ups, twelve billing currencies and an offshore entity from a US-facing site. Each one is answerable. Three at once is usually a decline.
None of these is permanent. Most are an application problem, a documentation problem, or both.
Find my processor03 / THE LINE THAT DECIDES YOUR FILE
Mainstream dating vs adult-adjacent.
If you read one section of this page, read this one. Underwriters don’t price “dating.” They price a position on a spectrum, and the position is set by things you can see on your own homepage. A mainstream matchmaking app and a hookup site running the same subscription code are two entirely different files, and the difference isn’t philosophical - it decides which acquirers will even look at you, which MCC you’re registered under, and whether you get a reserve at 5% or 10%.
What “mainstream” means to an underwriter
A mainstream file looks like this: profiles, photos, chat, matching, a subscription tier with a stated price and frequency, a cancellation path that works without an email, a descriptor the member recognizes, and ad creative that could run on a general-purpose platform without getting pulled. The promise is social. Nothing on the site implies that paying unlocks a sexual encounter or a specific person’s attention.
That file is underwritable by a broader set of processors, including some that wouldn’t touch adult content. Rates sit lower, reserves sit smaller, and the underwriting conversation is about disclosure and churn rather than about brand risk.
What changes when the site is adult-adjacent
The line moves when the site stops promising connection and starts promising intimacy, or when it sells access rather than membership. Three things push a dating business across it.
Paid introductions and escort adjacency
The moment money is tied to a specific person - escort listings, paid introductions, per-message credits that only work on one profile, “unlock her contact” flows - the file stops being dating at all. Visa treats dating and escort services under the same category code for a reason.
Offer language and ad creative
“Hookups tonight,” “no strings,” teaser landing pages, redirect funnels, before-and-after style imagery in creative. Even if your product is a legitimate membership, the traffic that converts on that creative brings a dispute profile with it.
Why this matters to banks
Two exposures move at once when a file crosses the line. First, brand risk: a card issuer or a network is attaching its logo to a merchant whose marketing may generate press, complaints or regulator attention. Second, dispute behavior: adult-adjacent funnels convert on impulse and churn on impulse, and impulse subscribers dispute more. The acquirer is pricing both.
That’s why the same revenue can be priced two very different ways. $80,000 a month of disclosed subscriptions from paid search is not the same file as $80,000 a month of trial conversions from adult ad networks, even though the deposit looks identical.
Your imagery, copy and ad creative are evidence
Underwriting doesn’t take your word for what kind of site you run. It reads the site, the checkout flow, the terms, the cancellation page, the app store listing, the ad library and the affiliate landing pages - and it reads them as evidence of how the account will behave.
| What gets read | Mainstream matchmaking | Adult-adjacent / escort-adjacent |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage imagery | Profile photos, lifestyle, no nudity | Explicit or suggestive imagery, preview galleries |
| Headline and offer copy | “Meet people near you,” membership tiers | “Hookups tonight,” per-message credits, tips |
| Ad creative | General-purpose platforms, brand-safe | Adult networks, redirect funnels, teaser pages |
| Billing model | Straight subscription, disclosed | Credits, token packs, per-message charges, $1 trials |
| Traffic sources | Organic, paid search, referral | Affiliates, adult ad networks, pop and redirect |
| Product features | Chat, matching, events | Escort listings, paid introductions, content sales |
| Age gating | 18+ statement | 18+ gate with a real age-verification step |
Two practical habits follow. Clean up the leftovers - an abandoned landing page from two years ago, an old affiliate creative, an outdated app store screenshot - because a live page is live evidence. And tell us which side of the line you’re on before we submit anything. We’d rather place an adult-adjacent platform with an acquirer that boards it than watch a mainstream presentation collapse in week three.
04 / UNDERWRITING
What processors actually look at.
Eight things decide a dating application. Everything else is conversation.
MCC 7273 and Visa registration
MCC 7273 is the merchant category code for dating and escort services, covering online dating and matchmaking. Under Visa’s framework, card-absent dating and escort merchants sit in Tier 1 of the High-Integrity Risk category, which puts obligations on your acquirer before you can process: an approved High-Integrity Risk acquirer registration, a separate Tier 1 approval for MCC 7273 specifically, and registration of your business with Visa before the first transaction is submitted, plus ongoing monitoring and certification. Details are in the Visa Merchant Data Standards Manual and the Visa Core Rules. Why you should care: a processor that “supports high risk dating payment processing” but has never handled a Tier 1 registration will cost you two weeks and then tell you it can’t. Ask early. Ask in writing.
Chargeback thresholds
Most processors work to an internal tolerance between 0.9% and 1.5%, and that number is almost always tighter than the network’s own. A processor’s tolerance governs your account; the network’s threshold governs your acquirer’s whole portfolio. We lay the network numbers out in the table below, but the working rule is simple: a member dispute rate you can explain is survivable. The same rate discovered during underwriting is not.
Billing model
Straight subscription, trial-to-paid, credit packs, one-off boosts, upsell bundles. Each is a separate risk profile, and a processor that’s comfortable with one may decline the next. Be precise about it. If your checkout runs two flows, say so - some acquirers will want them on separate accounts and separate merchant category codes.
Trial offers
Free and $1 trials are the hardest dating offer to place. Processors want to see the reminder flow, the consent record, the cancellation path and the descriptor before they talk price. The network requirements are theirs to enforce and yours to meet - we cover them in the free-trial section below.
Affiliate and rebill traffic sources
Traffic mix and retry logic are the two items most merchants under-report, and the two that most often decide the file. Where did the subscriber come from, and what happens when their card fails on renewal.
Geography and currency
Where you’re incorporated, where you bank, where members sign up from, how many currencies you bill in, and which countries you exclude. A US-incorporated platform with US card traffic is an easier file than the same platform with 40% international volume and an offshore entity.
App-store billing vs direct web checkout
Whether Apple and Google are collecting the money or you are changes everything about the risk. It gets its own section below.
Age verification and content controls
Expect to show an 18+ gate and to describe how you verify it, particularly if any part of your product is adult-adjacent. Visa’s expectations for this category include controls to prevent illegal activity, which in practice means an age gate that does something, content moderation that exists, and a documented policy for removing prohibited listings. A decorative “are you 18?” button is not a control.
05 / RATES AND RESERVES
What dating processing actually costs.
These are the ranges we see across the dating and app-based platforms we place. Your number depends on the factors above - treat this as a benchmark to sanity-check a quote against, not a price list. Nothing here is an offer or a quote.
| Billing model | Typical card rate | Typical per-transaction fee | Typical rolling reserve | Typical hold |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Straight subscription, clean disclosure | 2.5% – 4.0% | $0.10 – $0.25 | 5% – 8% | 90 – 120 days |
| Subscription with consented upsells | 3.0% – 4.5% | $0.10 – $0.30 | 5% – 10% | 90 – 180 days |
| Free-trial to paid (negative option) | 4.0% – 5.5% | $0.15 – $0.35 | 5% – 10% | 120 – 180 days |
| Affiliate-driven or rebill-heavy funnel | 4.5% – 6.0% | $0.20 – $0.35 | 8% – 10% | 120 – 180 days |
| Adult-adjacent or escort-adjacent platform | 5.0% – 6.0%+ | $0.20 – $0.35 | 10% | 180 days |
| Elevated chargeback history (any model) | 5.0% – 6.0%+ | $0.25 – $0.35 | 10% | 180 days |
Two numbers get an account shut down rather than merely repriced, so they deserve their own table.
| Monitoring program | Ratio threshold | Count threshold | What it counts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) | 1.5% | 1,500 | Issuer-reported fraud reports plus disputes, against settled transactions, monthly |
| Mastercard Excessive Chargeback program (ECM) | 1.5% | 100 chargebacks | Chargebacks against prior-month sales; usually assessed over two consecutive months |
| Mastercard High Excessive Chargeback (HECM) | 3.0% | 300 chargebacks | Same counting rules, higher tier |
Read carefully. The two networks don’t measure the same thing. Visa’s ratio folds fraud reports in with disputes, so a platform with clean disputes and a fraud problem can trip it. Mastercard’s requires the ratio and a minimum count, so a small merchant can run a scary-looking percentage without qualifying - and a large one can trip the threshold on volume alone. The thresholds have moved repeatedly, Visa’s most recently, so treat these as working targets rather than permanent facts, and ask your processor what its own tolerance is. That’s the number that governs your account.
A dating merchant account quoted below roughly 2.5% - especially on a trial or affiliate-heavy offer - usually means the processor hasn’t underwritten the vertical properly. It surfaces later, as a mid-contract rate review, a sudden reserve, a held payout or a shutdown notice.
Find my processor06 / TRIALS AND NEGATIVE OPTION
Free trials and negative option: the rules that trip dating sites up.
The pre-charge reminder
This section covers what most dating pages skip, and it’s the one that gets accounts terminated after they’re live. What follows is general information about card network expectations, not legal advice - the rules change, and your own counsel and processor should confirm what applies to your offer.
Visa: for subscription merchants offering a free or discounted trial that rolls into a recurring charge, the cardholder gets a reminder at least 7 days before the trial expires and the paid charge begins, and that reminder has to include a simple way to cancel - a link, not an email address. For trials of 7 days or less, the reminder details can be folded into the sign-up confirmation instead, provided that confirmation states when the trial ends and how to cancel. Visa also expects express consent to the ongoing subscription at enrollment, a terms confirmation stating the amount, frequency and that the subscription continues until cancelled, and a trial-specific enhanced descriptor on the first paid charge - something like “End Trial” - so the member can connect the charge to the offer they accepted. The detail sits in Visa’s trial subscription update and its subscription policy for free-trial merchants.
Mastercard: for negative-option trial offers longer than seven days, an electronic reminder 3 to 7 days before the trial ends and the paid plan begins, covering the upcoming transition, the subscription terms and how to cancel. The requirement doesn’t apply to trials of seven days or shorter. Mastercard’s rules also put obligations on the acquirer, including registration for covered negative-option models, and they address reminders for long-interval subscriptions. See the Mastercard subscription and negative-option FAQs.
The legal layer, briefly
Federal law in this area has been in motion. The FTC’s 2024 amendments to the Negative Option Rule - the “click to cancel” package - were vacated by the Eighth Circuit in July 2025 on procedural grounds, and the agency moved to restore the earlier, narrower rule in February 2026. That restores the pre-2024 text; it doesn’t repeal anything else. The FTC still enforces under the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act and Section 5 of the FTC Act, and state subscription laws add their own requirements on top. The FTC’s Negative Option Rule page and its consumer guidance on free trials and auto-renewals are the places to start. For a dating business, the practical takeaway is that the card network rules above are the binding pre-charge requirements, and they are stricter than the current federal floor.
Why trial-to-paid attracts the most disputes
Because the offer is designed to be forgotten. A member who takes a free trial, never engages, never cancels and gets charged is a dispute waiting for a statement date. Compliance is the floor, not the ceiling: a processor is pricing the probability that a meaningful share of your trial subscribers dispute the first paid charge, whether or not your reminder email was technically correct.
What processors want to see:
- A reminder that sends on a real schedule, with the send logged.
- Cancellation that works online, in the member’s account, without an email or a phone call - and that stops the next charge immediately rather than at the end of a notice period.
- A consent record per subscriber: what they agreed to, the amount, the frequency, the timestamp, the IP.
- A statement descriptor the member recognizes, ideally the brand they signed up with plus the trial marker.
- A terms page that states the recurring amount and frequency at least as prominently as the buy button.
- A retry and dunning policy you can describe in one paragraph.
If any of those are missing, fix them before you apply. Underwriting reads the funnel, and a well-disclosed trial with a working cancel button prices better than a clever one without.
07 / TRAFFIC AND REBILL
Affiliate traffic and rebill: the underwriting question nobody asks.
Most dating pages talk about rates. Almost none talk about this, and it’s where the file is actually decided.
Why affiliate-sourced subscribers are different risk
An organic subscriber found you, read your offer and paid on your page. An affiliate subscriber clicked a creative somebody else wrote, landed on a page you may not control, and converted on a promise you may not have approved. Three consequences follow.
You don’t own the promise. If the creative said “3 free months” or implied a specific person would message them, the complaint lands on your merchant account. The member doesn’t know which ad network they came through.
You don’t know the traffic quality. Affiliate networks are a mix of legitimate publishers and incentivized traffic. An affiliate running cashback, rewards or pop traffic produces subscribers with a very different engagement curve - and a very different dispute curve - from paid search.
You can’t produce the consent record. When a subscriber disputes and the bank asks what they agreed to, a clean funnel gives you a timestamped consent. Affiliate funnels sometimes give you a referral ID and nothing else.
None of this means affiliate traffic is unusable. It means processors price it differently, and most will ask for a channel-by-channel breakdown, the affiliate agreements, the creative that ran, and the geographies the traffic came from. Merchants who can produce that get treated as professionals. Merchants who answer “mostly organic” and then get audited don’t.
How rebill retries work
A subscription is a single authorization with many charges behind it. When a renewal fails - expired card, insufficient funds, issuer block - your processor or gateway can retry it on a schedule. That’s ordinary practice, and it recovers real revenue. It also generates the chargebacks that end dating accounts when it’s done badly. Three failure modes matter to underwriting:
1. Retrying soft declines forever. A soft decline is worth one or two attempts over a defined window. A card retried eleven times in nine days is a complaint, and enough of them is a monitoring problem.
2. Retrying after a hard decline. “Do not retry,” stolen card and closed account responses mean stop. Continuing is a network rules issue, not a judgment call.
3. Retrying a cancelled member. The fastest route to a guaranteed chargeback, and one processors test for directly.
The tools that make this manageable are account updater services, which refresh expired or reissued card credentials before the renewal runs, plus a retry schedule you can describe, plus suppression logic that stops all attempts the moment a member cancels. Ask your gateway what its default retry schedule is before you go live. Most default schedules are built for subscription boxes, not for a $39.99 dating membership with a dispute-sensitive cardholder base.
What processors want to see:
- Traffic sources broken out by channel, with the affiliate share stated as a number.
- Affiliate agreements, and the creative actually running, on request.
- A retry policy with a capped attempt count and a defined window.
- Confirmation that cancellations suppress future rebills immediately.
- Account updater in place before the first renewal cycle, not after.
- A chargeback and refund history by channel, if you have one, with the affiliate-driven portion separated out.
Bringing this unprompted does more for a dating file than any rate negotiation. It tells the underwriter you understand what you’re running.
08 / CHECKOUT MODEL
App store billing vs direct web checkout.
Where the money is collected decides which business you are, and processors assess the two models completely differently.
Inside the app store
If your subscribers pay through Apple’s in-app purchase or Google Play billing, the platform is the merchant of record. Apple or Google submits the transaction, absorbs the chargeback, handles refunds and pays you out on a settlement schedule. You don’t process the card at all.
The cost is the commission. Apple’s standard rate is 30%, dropping to 15% under the Small Business Program for developers under the $1 million proceeds threshold, with auto-renewable subscriptions at 30% in the subscriber’s first paid year and 15% on renewals after that in the same subscription group - see Apple’s Small Business Program terms and its auto-renewable subscription rules. Google Play’s standard subscription service fee is 15%, with the fee structure changing in some regions; the current numbers are in Google Play’s service fee documentation.
Underwriting consequence: platform-billed revenue is not a card-acceptance business. There’s no card-not-present exposure, no chargeback liability, no recurring authorization to underwrite - and no processing history either. A platform that has billed $2 million through the app stores has no merchant statements of its own, which makes a direct merchant account harder to price when you eventually apply for one. Settlement reports from the platforms become the stand-in for history.
On your own checkout
A direct web checkout makes you the merchant of record. You hold the authorization, you eat the dispute, you answer the bank. Card rates typically run 3% to 5% for a clean dating subscription, plus per-transaction fees and a reserve - against a platform commission of 30%.
That gap is why almost every serious dating operator eventually runs a web funnel. It’s also why processors read the direct-checkout file more closely: everything in this page lands on it directly - the billing model, the trial disclosure, the descriptor, the retry logic, the affiliate mix, the imagery.
Why the two models underwrite differently
| App store billing | Direct web checkout | |
|---|---|---|
| Merchant of record | Apple / Google | You |
| Cost per transaction | Up to 30% commission (15% small business) | Typically 2.5% – 6% card rate plus fees |
| Chargeback liability | Platform absorbs | Yours |
| Card processing history | None of your own | Full statements |
| Subscriber data and win-back | Limited | Yours |
| Cancellation control | Platform rules | Your flow, your responsibility |
| Underwriting focus | Payout risk | Billing model, disclosure, traffic, disputes |
The hybrid most platforms run
Acquire in the app, retain on the web. Members who sign up in-app are often encouraged - within the rules - to manage or resubscribe on your own checkout, where the rate is a fraction of the commission and you own the relationship. If that’s your plan, tell us at the start, because you may need two records: a direct dating merchant account for the web flow, and platform settlement history as supporting evidence for the volume the stores generate.
09 / HOW IT WORKS
How the application works.
Six steps. A complete file typically gets a decision in 3 to 10 business days, and the variable is documentation, not the processor.
- 1
You submit the form - same day.
A short form. We read it and come back with questions, usually the same day.
- 2
We pre-review the business - 1 to 2 days.
We read the site, the app store listing, the billing model, the trial flow, the cancellation path, the descriptor, the traffic mix and the geography, and we tell you what an underwriter will flag before anyone submits anything. For a dating file, this step prevents more declines than the application itself.
- 3
You assemble the documentation - 2 to 5 days.
The list is below. The traffic breakdown and the disclosure screenshots are the two items that take longest, so start there.
- 4
We match you and you submit - same day to 2 days.
Two to four processors whose acquiring bank actually boards MCC 7273 files at your volume, in your geography, with your billing model - with the reasoning attached. Apply to one or two, not ten. Every application creates a record, and a cluster of simultaneous applications reads as distress.
- 5
Underwriting and Visa registration - 3 to 10 business days.
The processor reviews the file, usually with one round of clarifications, runs a site review against the pages you submitted, and completes the Tier 1 registration where it applies. Answer requests the same day. Files that stall usually stall because the merchant went quiet.
- 6
Approval, MID and the first reserve review - 1 to 5 days, then 30 to 90 days.
You get a merchant ID, gateway credentials and a settlement schedule. Confirm where the rolling reserve appears on your first statement so it isn’t a surprise on day one, and confirm the retry schedule your gateway will use on the first failed renewal. Your first reserve review typically lands after one to three clean months, and your dispute ratio, refund rate and disclosure compliance all feed into whether the reserve drops, holds or moves.
Expect to provide:
- Business license and entity formation documents
- EIN confirmation
- Government ID for the signer
- Bank statements - typically the last three to six months
- Processing statements from your current or previous processor, if you have any
- A traffic source breakdown by channel, with the affiliate share stated as a number
- A chargeback and refund history, with an explanation for anything elevated
- Site and checkout screenshots, including the trial terms, the recurring disclosure, the cancellation flow and the age gate
- Affiliate agreements and sample creative, where affiliates drive sign-ups
One habit carries through all six steps: never describe your business to a processor differently from how your website describes it. The file and the site have to match. When they don’t, the site wins and the account closes.
10 / GOOD QUESTIONS
Dating merchant account questions.
Can dating sites get a merchant account?
Yes - with processors whose acquiring bank has an explicit policy for dating and escort services. A dating merchant account is underwritten under MCC 7273 by a bank that has agreed to board the category and completed the registration Visa requires for it, not by a mainstream processor that approves the application and closes the account once the trial billing and affiliate traffic become clear. The constraint isn’t whether it’s possible. It’s which acquirers will price your billing model and your traffic mix, and what your site has to look like for them to say yes.
Why is dating considered high risk?
Four reasons, and none of them is that members meet each other. Recurring billing makes one authorization the basis for every future charge. Free-trial offers convert on impulse and churn the same way. Affiliate traffic brings promises you didn’t write and consent records you may not have. And involuntary churn - expired cards, failed renewals, retries - produces disputes long after the member stopped using the product. Underwriters price that combination, and the adult-adjacent end of the market adds brand risk on top.
What rates should a dating site expect?
Most dating and subscription platforms land between 2.5% and 6% per transaction, with per-transaction fees of $0.10 to $0.35. Straight, fully disclosed subscriptions sit at the bottom of that range. Trial-to-paid offers, affiliate-heavy funnels and adult-adjacent platforms sit at the top. A quote below roughly 2.5% for a trial or affiliate-driven offer usually means the processor hasn’t underwritten the vertical properly, and that usually surfaces within a few months.
What is a rolling reserve?
A rolling reserve is a percentage of your monthly volume the processor holds back to cover future chargebacks, refunds and disputes. Dating reserves typically run 5% to 10% held for 90 to 180 days, then released on a rolling basis - so a 10% reserve held for 180 days means each month’s 10% comes back roughly six months later, provided the account stays clean. Reserves are standard in this vertical and negotiable at review. A clean processing period, a working cancellation flow and a dispute ratio under the processor’s tolerance all move the number.
Can I run a free trial on a dating site?
Usually, but it’s the hardest offer to place and the reason your file gets extra attention. Visa’s rules expect a reminder at least 7 days before the first paid recurring charge, with a simple online cancellation path, plus express consent, a terms confirmation and a trial-specific descriptor on the first paid charge. Mastercard’s expect a reminder 3 to 7 days before the trial ends for offers longer than a week, plus acquirer registration for covered models. Expect the top of the rate range, a longer reserve hold and a shorter list of processors willing to board the offer at all.
What is MCC 7273?
MCC 7273 is the merchant category code for dating and escort services, covering online dating and matchmaking. Visa classifies card-absent dating and escort merchants as Tier 1 high-integrity risk, which requires the acquirer to hold the relevant approval and to register each merchant with Visa before transactions are submitted. The code drives which network rules apply, which monitoring program watches the account, and how much of the acquirer’s due diligence is front-loaded. Ask, in writing, which MCC your processor intends to register for each flow you run.
What if I’ve been declined?
A decline isn’t permanent, but it needs an explanation attached to it. Find out why: was it the billing model, the trial disclosure, the traffic mix, the geography, the site content, or a bank with no dating policy? Fix the cause before applying again, and don’t shotgun applications across five processors at once. If a previous account was shut down or a reserve was held, disclose it. Processors price disclosed history, and they decline discovered history.
How long does approval take?
A complete application typically gets a decision in 3 to 10 business days. The variables are documentation and registration - processing statements, traffic breakdown, disclosure screenshots, and the Visa Tier 1 registration where it applies. Files with everything ready sit at the fast end. Files where underwriting has to chase paperwork or wait on registration sit at the slow end, and often get re-underwritten from scratch.
Can I use Stripe or Shopify Payments?
Not for a dating subscription with meaningful volume, and not for a trial offer at all. Mainstream processors restrict or prohibit the category in their terms, and the usual outcome isn’t a clean decline at application - it’s an approval followed by a frozen balance or an abrupt closure a few months in, which is worse, because it strands revenue mid-cycle and leaves a suspicious pattern on your record. If your checkout is on Shopify, you can keep the platform and pair it with a third-party high-risk gateway and merchant account.
Do I need age verification?
If any part of your product is adult-adjacent, plan on more than a checkbox. Visa’s expectations for this category include controls designed to prevent illegal activity, and in practice that means an 18+ gate that actually filters, a documented verification method for higher-risk flows, moderation that removes prohibited listings, and a policy you can show an underwriter. Age-verification obligations also increasingly come from state law rather than card networks, so confirm what applies to your jurisdictions with your own counsel. Underwriting will ask how it works, not whether it exists.
11 / NEXT STEP
Let’s find your processor.
Tell us about the business - the billing model, the trial flow, the traffic mix and the geography. We’ll come back with the processors that fit, tell you plainly when one doesn’t, and prep the documentation with you before anything goes to underwriting.
Dating is one of several verticals we cover - browse the full list of high-risk payment processing industries.
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This page is general information about payment processing and merchant underwriting. It is not legal, tax or compliance advice, and it is not a promise of approval. Rates, reserves and thresholds are benchmarks, not offers. We don’t recommend or endorse any specific processor.
Sources
- Visa - Merchant Data Standards Manual - merchant category codes.
- Visa - Core Rules and Product and Service Rules - High-Integrity Risk registration.
- Visa - Trial Subscription Updates - reminder, consent and descriptor requirements.
- Visa - Updated Policy for Subscription Merchants Offering Free Trials - free-trial policy.
- Visa - Evolving the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program - VAMP thresholds.
- Mastercard - Subscription/Recurring Payments and Negative Option Billing FAQs - negative-option requirements.
- Mastercard - Security Rules and Procedures (SPME Manual) - network rules.
- FTC - Negative Option Rule - federal rule status.
- FTC - Getting in and out of free trials, auto-renewals and negative-option subscriptions - consumer guidance.
- eCFR - 16 CFR Part 425 - use of prenotification negative option plans.
- Apple - App Store Small Business Program - reduced commission terms.
- Apple - Auto-renewable subscriptions - subscription commission rules.
- Google - Google Play service fees - subscription service fees.