What are Merchant SAFE Approved Sites?

Merchant SAFE Approved Sites are sites that are certified by Merchant SAFE as safe sites to shop and enter your personal and financial information. These are reputable brands that have gained the trust of millions of customers in United States and across the world. Merchant SAFE Approved Sites are known for safeguarding customer data and have good customer satisfaction on online transactions. These sites are known to deliver what they promised or sold. Sites are selected through a comprehensive research conducted by Merchant SAFE over a period of time, analyzing data from various sources as well as customer feedback from several online portals. In order for a site to be approved, they must meet all of our approval criteria.

How are sites chosen?

The first and foremost thing to understand about the Merchant SAFE approved sites list is the fact that NO company will be able to buy into the program. In other words, all the sites under the approved sites list are hand selected and reviewed by Merchant SAFE and must pass our stringent requirements and guidelines in order to make the list. Once a company makes the list, there is no guarantee that it will remain in the list. Customer feedback, ongoing security and privacy practices of the company play a huge role in determining whether a site remains in that list.

After comprehensive analysis, we are willing to put the reputation of our brand on the line in order to approve a site and certify that it is generally safe to shop on any one of the sites in the list. Should there be an issue, we are willing to go extra lengths to research into the issue, and expose the wrongdoings by the company, if any, in a public forum.

Some of our Approval Criteria include the following:

1. Seamless Shopping and checkout Experience.

2. Professional Design and layouts

3. No confusing or deceiving offers during checkout that the customer is not buying

4. Clear access to terms and conditions

5. SSL encryption for checkout pages

6. Clear access to privacy policy

7. Ability to opt-out of email newsletters and other offers

8. Past record of good customer satisfaction

9. Acceptable quality for the Product/Service sold

10. Follow industry best practices and guidelines when it comes to privacy

11. Security and PCI compliance

12. Excellent track record in Safeguarding of customer data

13. No “Gotcha” in the fine print that are considered unfair for most customers

14. No malware

15. No Spyware

16. Good Customer support

17. On-time order fulfilment

18. Use of major shipping carriers

19. Shipping and return policies

20. Other factors affecting customer satisfaction

Merchant SAFE is committed in promoting a safe online shopping environment, by promoting transparency among merchants and consumers. The internet should no longer remain the wild west. If you are a consumer, you can shop with confidence from any of the approved Merchant SAFE sites.

If you work for a top online retailer or would like to have your website considered for inclusion in the Merchant SAFE approved sites list, please apply here. There is no guarantee that your site will be included in the list or will remain in the list.