High Risk Businesses and Services
Industry insights and analysis to help platforms and payment service providers evaluate and action merchants offering services that pose elevated regulatory and card network risk.
High-risk services are ones that pose a greater potential for abuse or harm to consumers, which is why it’s essential to understand the regulatory and card network rules that govern them. LegitScript offers insights that help platforms and payment services providers evaluate these services with confidence. Our policy expertise and regulatory knowledge support better policy making and decisioning during merchant onboarding and merchant monitoring.
Merchants offering high-risk business models — everything from negative-option billing and multilevel marketing to sweepstakes casinos and loans — expose them to greater chargebacks, fraud, and regulatory scrutiny.
Blog Articles
Latest Blog Article
What You Need to Know about VIRP Updates to Adult, Escort, and Dating Merchants
February 16, 2026
by Erin Feebeck
Late last year, Visa began enforcing new standards within the Visa Integrity Risk Program (VIRP) that affect adult content, dating services, and escort services. These updates raise expectations for merchant classification, transparency, and compliance. Keep reading to learn about these changes.
Gaining Visibility and Control Across Your Downstream Merchant Portfolio
As payment ecosystems grow more complex, sponsor banks are under increasing pressure to maintain effective oversight of their downstream merchant portfolios. At the same time, managing merchant risk at scale has never been more challenging. Keep reading to learn how LegitScript is tackling this challenge.
February 12, 2026
Watch Out For These High-risk Merchant Behaviors During the Holiday Season
With holiday spending set to rise this year, payment processors and online marketplaces vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated scams and other high-risk tactics. Keep reading to learn about illicit and brand-damaging behavior that can spike during the holiday season.
November 4, 2025
Guides
Merchant Website Analysis Tip Sheet
Designed for payments risk and compliance teams, this helpful sheet offers practical tips when reviewing merchant websites.
2 pages
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Top 10 High-risk Trends That Put Your Internet Platform at Risk
Learn about recent high-risk trends on the commercial internet that can harm consumers and damage your reputation.
36 pages
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Seasonal High-risk Trends Everyone in Payments Should Watch Out For
Gain insight into seasonal high-risk trends in card-not-present transactions that all payment service providers should be aware of.
48 pages
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Mugshots Map
Learn how certain mugshot websites could result in fines for acquirers and payment providers that onboard them.
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Webinars
Wednesday, April 15 at 1 p.m. Eastern | 10 a.m. Pacific
IPTV: How Payments Teams Can Detect and Prevent Hidden Risk
Streaming TV has become mainstream — but for payments companies, illicit IPTV merchants represent a fast-growing and highly evasive risk category. In this webinar, we’ll break down how illicit IPTV operators infiltrate payment ecosystems — and how you can detect and stop them.
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On Demand
Social Gaming and Sweepstakes Casinos
New forms of online gambling present heightened risk to payment service providers through chargebacks, fraud, and reputational damage. In this webinar, learn about the regulations and risks around social gaming, sweepstakes casinos, and other forms of novel online gambling.
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On Demand
Social Media and Marketplace Platforms: The Online Risk Management Handbook Webinar
The Online Risk Management Handbook Webinar A special webinar for social media companies and e-commerce platforms offering highlights and case studies from our new handbook. Watch On-Demand LegitScript is proud to announce the Online Risk Management Handbook webinar, which dives into a few of the most relevant chapters of our new Online Risk Management Handbook….
