Glossary
Transaction laundering
Running one business's card payments through another business's merchant account, so the bank sees a different merchant. Card networks treat it as fraud; US regulators call it credit card laundering.
Also called: credit card laundering, factoring, merchant aggregation fraud.
The usual setup is a front website that the acquirer approves, while real customers pay on a different site selling something the bank wouldn't accept. Visa lists transaction laundering as a reason to put a merchant on its VMSS list, and Mastercard has a laundering code in MATCH.
The FTC's 2026 complaint against Humboldt Merchant Services describes the industrial version: straw signers paid $750 a month to front LLCs, "bank pages" selling travel-size products at trial prices, and at least $139 million processed through more than 1,000 shell accounts.
For affiliates, the warning sign is a checkout that doesn't match the offer: a different brand on the card statement, or a straight-sale page for what you promoted as a trial.
Related terms: Load balancing, MID, MCC, MATCH list, Trial.