Glossary
Load balancing
Spreading one merchant's sales across several merchant accounts so none of them crosses the card networks' chargeback triggers. Mastercard says it usually serves no legitimate purpose; FTC orders ban it.
Also called: MID load balancing, MID stacking, MID cascading, transaction routing.
Routing payments between providers isn't illegal by itself: big merchants route for cost and approval rates. It becomes load balancing when the point is to keep each account below monitoring lines, typically through several accounts opened in other companies' names for the same business.
Mastercard described it to Humboldt Merchant Services as dividing volume across merchant accounts "to keep its total number of transactions below Mastercard fraud monitoring and other compliance thresholds." The 2026 FTC order against Humboldt bans balancing volume among merchant accounts or billing descriptors to avoid monitoring programs.
Trial-offer advertisers often route through CRMs that pick the MID with the best approval rate. Sudden approval swings on such offers can mean the routing changed, not your traffic.
Related terms: MID, Transaction laundering, VAMP, Approval rate, CC submit.