Sweepstakes payment processing: a practical compliance + acquiring guide for online merchants (WiseAlt)
Sweepstakes can be a fast, scalable growth lever for online merchants—email capture, referrals, reactivation, and product launches. But sweepstakes also sit on a thin compliance line, and payment partners often treat them as high-scrutiny because a “nearly correct” promo can quickly look like an illegal lottery (or even gambling-like activity) once you add payments, subscriptions, affiliates, and cross-border traffic. This guide explains how to structure and document a sweepstakes so your sweepstakes payment processing can be approved, monitored, and scaled—without avoidable chargebacks, fraud, or sudden shutdown risk.