Numerous legitimate pharmaceutical companies as well as online pharmacy businesses worldwide put public safety first and follow the appropriate laws and regulations. However, there are also many illegal businesses that only care about making a dime in a multi-billion dollar industry.
These devious online pharmacies deliver medication illegally and without prescriptions. They require customers to fill out a brief medical questionnaire and then pay doctors to review them. These questionnaires cannot determine whether the customer is a drug addict, is underage, or has another condition that the medication could potentially worsen.
Illegal online pharmacies do not care about their customers and the products they sell are often questionable at best. The medication may be counterfeit, mislabeled, adulterated, or even contaminated. The Food and Drug Administration does not oversee the production of these medications and they are often made in underground laboratories out of suspicious raw materials.
The Internet is full of illegal online pharmacy businesses. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, more than 80,000 portal websites are selling advertisement space for prescription medication and link to more than 1,400 anchor websites that allow customers to purchase them through illegal online pharmacies.
Spotting Legal Pharmacy Websites
To an uneducated eye, it can be tough to know the difference between legal and illegal pharmacy websites. Instabill has been providing reliable pharmacy merchant accounts to honest merchants worldwide since 2001, and we can help you learn how to spot a good site.
A legitimate and legal pharmacy website will:
- Require customers to submit prescriptions from a licensed doctor, usually by mail (if the website accepts a fax or scanned copy of the prescription, they will always call the doctor to verify the prescription first)
- Make customers submit a detailed medical history so it knows what prescriptions will have negative effects
- Clearly state their payment, privacy, and shipping policies on their website
- Use secure and encrypted website connections to conduct online transactions (look for the HTTPS in the URL)
Need More Proof?
If you are still uncertain of whether you can trust the online pharmacy you want to use, check to see if the merchant’s website is on the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) website.
The NABP certifies many online pharmacy businesses to help assure consumers that these websites are safe and legal. However, keep in mind that some of the larger Internet pharmacies may not have these NABP certifications because they are well-recognized and trusted names.
Instabill Pharmacy Merchant Account Services
If you operate a legal and legitimate online pharmacy and you are looking for credit card processing services, Instabill has a secure and affordable merchant account solution for you. We offer 3D Secure and non-3D Secure pharmacy merchant accounts to e-commerce businesses worldwide that allow you to accept major credit cards in multiple currencies.
The Instabill Risk Compliance Department performs due diligence background checks on business owners as well as the online pharmacy. We also verify orders with customers over the telephone or through emails to make sure they are satisfied with the goods they received.
If you want to learn more about opening a pharmacy merchant account with Instabill, contact us online or call 1-800-318-2713 today.
