In Hack Wars a player interested in merchanting has several options available to them: you can compile scripts and upload them to your store, you can become a wholesaler for other players, you can purchase and resell firewalls, you can even become a reseller of the rare secret images hidden throughout Hack Wars. As you make profits and deposit the money into your bank, you will increase your merchanting skill. A high merchanting skill allows you to create new banking scripts using more powerful API functions. These allow you to cut down on banking service charges, and to forge more powerful malicious scripts. A high-level merchant also receives a discount when purchasing items from stores.

Hack Wars allows players to gain money in many ways, including:

• Your daily pay, including your guaranteed pay.
• Opponents’ daily pay, which you may redirect by attacking their HTTP port.
• Attacking an opponent’s bank port to steal their petty cash
• Attacking NPCs to steal money or files to sell in your store
• Selling files in your online store
• Installing malicious banking or FTP programs on your opponents’ systems
• Resell programs from a store with a level restriction to lower level players
• Selling files dropped by NPCs.