Legal
Our payment processor's contract terms are quietly unworkable.
High-risk merchant agreements are drafted for the acquirer's protection and signed under time pressure, often after several declines. The terms that later cause damage are rarely the headline rate. They sit in the schedules: a rolling reserve set as a percentage of gross volume with no release schedule, a chargeback fee stacked on top of a monitoring fee, an amendment clause allowing unilateral repricing on notice, and a termination-for-convenience right exercisable immediately while funds remain held.
Two mechanisms do most of the harm. The first is the reserve compounding: settlement is withheld faster than it is released, so operating cash falls even while revenue rises. The second is the interaction between termination and reserve release: the agreement permits closure at will but defers release for 180 days or longer, so the merchant loses processing and working capital at the same moment.
Once a card-network monitoring programme is triggered, the acquirer often relies on those same clauses rather than negotiating, because the network fine falls on the acquirer.
How LTB Resolves It
LTB reads the executed agreement, the schedules, and the settlement records together, then quantifies what the terms actually cost against the volumes being processed. That produces a short list of clauses worth contesting and the leverage available for each: usually processing history, remediation already completed, or a credible alternative acquirer.
Contract review, negotiation, and dispute correspondence are conducted by LTB directly across the EU and through vetted local counsel in other jurisdictions. Where the sound outcome is a different acquirer rather than an amended contract, LTB places the merchant relationship with an institution in its network, structured so the reserve and termination terms are agreed before the account is opened rather than discovered afterwards.
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