Polar rejected my SaaS over two words in my landing page. Here's the appeal process nobody documents.

Last week my merchant-of-record application got denied. Automated review. Then my appeal got denied too - same day.

The reason: my landing page described my product as helping with "lead generation". Two words. That phrase sits on the prohibited list of basically every merchant of record (Polar, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy), next to gambling and CBD. I didn't know. It's not really in their docs.

What the product actually does: monitors public conversations and drafts helpful replies a human reviews. Social listening, in industry terms. Same product, different two words - one framing is bannable, the other is fine.

What got me approved on human review

Here's what got me approved on human review, in case you hit the same wall:

• Audited every processor-visible word. "Leads" → "mentions and conversations". "Outreach" → gone. If a word implies contacting people who didn't ask, it's radioactive to underwriters.
• Added real legal pages. Terms, Privacy, Refunds - linked in the footer. Approval reviewers check for them; most indie landing pages don't have them.
• Made the "human in the loop" explicit. "No auto-send. You review every reply." Underwriters care about spam potential, not your feature list.
• Escalated past the bot. Automated denial + denied appeal ≠ dead. I requested human review and got approved the same day.

The pattern

Since then I've been reading every MoR rejection story I can find (Paddle's undocumented checks, Lemon Squeezy's Trustpilot meltdown) and the pattern is the same: most rejections are fixable wording/legal-page problems, but founders don't know which words tripped the wire, and the processors won't tell you.

What I built

I ended up packaging what I learned: I put the copy scanner up for free at https://audeza.com - paste your landing copy, it flags the trigger vocabulary. The full kit (legal-page templates, per-processor escalation playbook) is waitlist-only for now.

Honest framing: it maximizes your odds, nothing can guarantee underwriting.

If you're facing (or fearing) an MoR rejection: the scanner is free, no signup. If the full kit would be useful, join the waitlist there - if enough people want it, I'll finish it; if not, this post is the free version - steal the 4 steps above.