MATCH stands for Member Alert to Control High-Risk Merchants, and it is the database that acquiring banks and processors use to identify merchants whose previous processing relationships were terminated for cause. When a merchant account is closed for reasons such as excessive chargebacks, fraud, violation of card network rules, or sale of prohibited products, the acquiring bank that closed the account may add the merchant to the MATCH list. The listing remains active for a defined period and is visible to every processor that checks the database during underwriting.
A MATCH listing does not make it impossible to obtain traditional processing, but it reduces the number of processors willing to approve the application to a small subset of high-risk specialists, and those processors typically impose punitive terms. Closed merchant payment processing through 27 Blockchain operates entirely outside the MATCH system because blockchain transactions do not flow through acquiring banks that check the database. The MATCH listing has no effect on the merchant's ability to accept crypto payments through 27 Blockchain's infrastructure.
