Use case summary
Set fees, minimum and maximum amounts, and rolling reserve terms for each merchant separately, then cap exposure with turnover and velocity limits per payment method. Add allow and deny lists and 3DS rules where the risk warrants it. Result: high-risk merchants carry their own cover, and low-risk ones stop paying for it.
- Finance & CFO
- Payment Ops
The liability arrives long after the money does
A payment business settles its merchants in days. Chargebacks, refunds, and disputes arrive weeks or months later, and by then the funds have already left.
Someone absorbs that gap. Payment card fraud losses worldwide came to $33.41 billion in 2024, spread across issuers, merchants, and acquirers. When a merchant cannot cover its own share, the exposure sits with the provider that settled it.
The usual answer is one reserve percentage and one processing ceiling applied across the whole portfolio. Low-risk merchants pay for cover they never use and shop for a cheaper provider. High-risk merchants stay under-covered until the month they are not. Meanwhile, the actual terms live in a spreadsheet.
How to price risk merchant by merchant
Corefy holds fee, reserve, and limit settings at the merchant level. Changing one merchant's terms leaves the rest of the portfolio untouched.
- 1
Set fee and reserve terms per merchant
Specify fees per payment method, minimum and maximum amounts, and rolling reserve settings for each merchant individually. Adjust them without touching the platform configuration or any other merchant's setup.
- 2
Cap exposure with limits
Set turnover and velocity limits per payment method, so a merchant's processing volume and transaction frequency stay inside what you underwrote. Overdraft limits define how far a balance may go negative.
- 3
Keep the money side visible
Manage each merchant's accepted currencies, balance accounts, and reserve settings from one place, with manual deposits and withdrawals available where a balance needs correcting.
- 4
Add risk controls where the profile calls for them
Define allow and deny lists, 3DS rules, and transaction blocking logic per merchant, without those rules touching the rest of your portfolio.
- 5
Watch the portfolio, not the spreadsheet
Operational alerts fire when payment activity spikes, a provider becomes unstable, webhooks fail, or unusual transaction patterns appear.
- 6
Let merchants see their own position
Through the merchant portal, each merchant sees its payout schedule, fee breakdown, rolling reserve balance, and settlement detail, which takes routine questions off your finance team.
What you get
Risk pricing becomes a per-merchant decision instead of a portfolio-wide compromise.
Terms that match the underwriting
Each merchant carries the reserve and ceilings its own profile justifies.
Competitive pricing for good merchants
Low-risk accounts stop subsidizing the portfolio and stop leaving over it.
Exposure with a ceiling on it
Turnover and velocity limits cap what a single merchant can run through you.
Fewer inbound finance questions
Merchants check their reserve balance and fee breakdown themselves.
What rolling reserve terms look like in practice
High-risk merchant accounts commonly carry a rolling reserve of 5% to 10% of each transaction, held for 30 to 180 days. On a portfolio of any size, that is a meaningful amount of merchant money you are holding, tracking, and releasing on schedule, with terms that differ by merchant, industry, and processing history. The work is in keeping every one of those schedules correct while the portfolio grows. Configuring reserves, limits, and balances per merchant in one place is what makes that manageable as the merchant count climbs.