Are sketchy dietary supplements tainting your merchant portfolio?
If your merchant sells weight loss, sexual enhancement, or bodybuilding supplements, there’s a chance they may contain hidden ingredients that could harm public health. The FDA routinely tests these types of products in their lab, keeping a growing list of products that have been found to be tainted. According to the FDA, undeclared adverse ingredients include:
“Approved prescription drug ingredients and their analogues, drugs banned by FDA for safety reasons, controlled substances such as anabolic steroids and stimulant diet drugs, or new active drug ingredients that are untested and unstudied.”
The FDA regularly dispatches public notifications about products that should not be purchased by consumers due to hidden ingredients. They have issued the most warnings, by far, about sexual enhancement products. This is because many of these supplements secretly contain sildenafil or tadalafil, the active ingredients in Viagra and Cialis, respectively. This poses risk to all consumers, but especially to those who have heart conditions or take nitrate medications.
These products have names like Arize, ForeverMen, Wild Bull, Rhino 7S Type F3 7000, and Infinity 10K. They are sold at local gas stations, or online through adult specialty shops, but they can even end up on the virtual shelves of major retailers and marketplaces. Plus, nefarious actors may launder sales of tainted supplements through seemingly benign online shops. This practice is known as transaction laundering.
If the card brands determine that they are unknowingly facilitating payments for tainted supplements, they may protect consumers by levying heavy fines onto acquiring banks. However, in a dynamic industry with many different products, it is difficult to stay up to date on the latest regulations. You will need active monitoring to stay ahead of the trends. Protect yourself with G2 Risk Solutions. We have both the technology and human expertise to catch these violating products and remove them from your portfolio before they can do harm.
To talk to an expert or learn more, contact us.