Adyen Review

Pros

• Ideal for international merchants
• No setup or application fees
• No monthly fee
• Offers interchange-plus and flat-rate pricing

Cons

• Required monthly minimum
• Not for high-risk merchants
• Mixed customer reviews

What Is Adyen?

Adyen is an international merchant account provider working to build new technology and systems from the ground up, bypassing middlemen and old-fashioned payment infrastructure. It accomplishes its goal of “frictionless” payments by providing merchants with a source for local acquiring and managing multiple acquirers through Adyen’s payment processing and gateway.

The company’s services are primarily designed for established, successful companies looking to expand into new markets, and it’s a great choice for big-name, mid-to-enterprise level clients operating on a global scale (for example, eBay and Microsoft use Adyen).

Adyen’s suitability for small businesses, however, is mixed. While it offers tremendous capabilities, you’ll need substantial technical know-how and patience to take advantage of them. The company’s pricing structure also works best for established, high-volume enterprises.

Countries Served

Adyen’s primary market is Europe, but the company has rapidly expanded to other parts of the world. Adyen is also fully supported in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Singapore, and the United States.

Additionally, Adyen offers limited payment services, often through partners, to a number of countries in Africa, including Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco, and Egypt.

Adyen Payments Products & Services

Adyen is a direct processor, not a reseller or ISO. The company describes itself as a “full-stack” payment service provider (PSP), meaning that it provides the payment gateway and processing capability while undertaking risk management and merchant acquiring responsibilities. Basically, it’s a true end-to-end solution, handling the entire payment flow.

Let’s take a look at Adyen’s main features.

Adyen Pricing & Fees

Adyen’s pricing models are organized by global region, country, and payment type. (Learn more about pricing models in our post on credit card processing fees.)

On Adyen’s pricing page, US customers are offered a mix of interchange-plus pricing (for Visa and Mastercard) and flat rates (for American Express and Discover), which Adyen calls “blend.” This makes an apples-to-apples pricing comparison to processors that use only one of those payment schemes difficult.

Here’s how Adyen’s pricing breaks down. (Note that the following pricing applies to US merchants only.)

Pricing Overview

As you can see, Adyen charges no monthly fee and its transaction fees are the same for eCommerce and POS transactions.

Adyen’s standard credit card processing fee of interchange + 0.6% + $0.13 (for Visa & Mastercard) includes the interchange fee (obviously), which is charged by the card issuer, plus Adyen’s processing fee, which is the same for every payment type, and an additional percentage-based “payment method fee.”

Extra Costs

Adyen allows you to accept various alternative payment types, and its flat processing fee stays the same regardless of the payment type. The only fee that changes is the payment method fee, which is dependent on the specific payment type.

Adyen chargeback fees also vary by payment type used.

Note that Adyen requires merchants meet a minimum monthly invoice amount to keep their accounts in good standing. This requirement is the most significant impediment to small or newly established businesses being able to use Adyen as their payment processor.

Common fees that Adyen does not charge include the following:

• Account setup fees
• Early termination fees
• Annual fees
• Monthly account fees
• PCI compliance fees
• Gateway fees
• Additional processing fees for currency conversion

Adyen’s pricing is reasonable for a cutting-edge, international payment processor accustomed to serving high-end, complex clients. The all-inclusive pricing style is appealing, and I also like that you automatically receive interchange-plus pricing for Visa and Mastercard, no matter your business type or size.

On the other hand, the flat-rate pricing on American Express and Discover is a bit higher than what you’d get with third-party processors, such as what you would pay with Square’s pricing and Stripe’s pricing.

Ease Of Use

Adyen tends to draw comparisons to Stripe because both services take a developer-first approach to service. Adyen even makes prospective customers set up a basic integration prior to application approval. This mostly just involves generating an API key and plugging it into some command line code provided in the Adyen documentation, but you could get fancier if you want.

While it’s not that complex, the basic application process seems almost designed to intimidate people without any technical background. The developer experience and documentation look pretty good overall, but it still falls a little short of what Stripe offers. Adyen supports Ruby, Java, PHP, Python, C#, NodeJs, and Go.

As for the dashboard experiences, it’s fairly straightforward if not entirely welcoming. Most of what you’re looking for will be found under the sidebar heading you’d guess it would be under. The initial “tour” offered for new users is bare-bones, however, so be prepared to do some clicking and exploring.

Sales & Advertising Transparency

Adyen publicly discloses most of the information you’d want to see before applying. This includes a detailed list of transaction fees, supported payment types, and hardware offerings.

However, Adyen’s additional fees still aren’t listed on the site, and some of the company’s more advanced features could be explained with more clarity. If you’re using the site’s search function, be prepared to be served up articles in Dutch occasionally.

Contract Length & Early Termination Fees

Adyen contracts are indefinite, and there is no early termination fee for its merchant accounts. Either party can terminate the merchant agreement by giving at least 60 days’ notice in writing.

When it comes time to cancel, many merchants are surprised that a simple phone call won’t guarantee that your account will be closed properly. And if you don’t follow the proper “paper trail,” there isn’t much you can do about it. So be sure to put your request in writing to avoid frustration. We do like that there won’t be any need to worry about or buy out the rest of a terminal lease.

In some circumstances, either the merchant or Adyen may terminate the contract immediately. For example, if the service availability is below 90% in a given month, the merchant may terminate the agreement. By the same token, Adyen may terminate the contract if the merchant changes the products or services they’re offering without written permission. These are pretty standard conditions, but see section 10.2 of Adyen’s Merchant Service Agreement for the full explanation.

Adyen is generally not into high-risk clients and will readily suspend an account if there are too many chargebacks. The chargeback threshold is 0.5% of the total transaction volume for most payment methods, and the merchant could also be subject to fines. This is explained in section 7.1 of the Adyen Merchant Service Agreement. Note that the 0.5% figure is more strict than the general industry standard of 1%.

Additionally, accounts may be subject to a rolling reserve, which Adyen calls “Deposit Reservation” in section 3.5. That’s a bit more in line with industry practices.

Customer Service & Technical Support

Adyen employs tech support staff around the world via email, web, and phone during business hours. Emergency support is provided 24 hours a day. A list of worldwide offices and phone numbers is on Adyen’s Contact page, along with a web form for filing technical support tickets. This is all nice to see.

Even nicer to see, the website itself is a wealth of information, easily searchable for developer documents, product descriptions, and case studies. Detailed, country-specific guides may be downloaded for some countries, but you can also find a quick overview of each country’s common payment methods and “inside tips” on how to enter each market.

The Support tab is split into several helpful FAQ and troubleshooting sections, while the Developer tab contains its own set of resources. You can also bet that Adyen maintains active Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube accounts that highlight new product developments and industry news. The e-newsletter and blog round out Adyen’s online resources.

On the surface, all signs indicate solid customer service and sales support with Adyen. However, some of the user reviews from small business owners in the section below give cause for concern.

User Reviews

Final Verdict

Adyen really seems to do it all. Where most international payment processors have focused on eCommerce and in-app purchases, Adyen adds brick-and-mortar and point of sale setups to the mix.

The platform-style approach will draw comparisons to Square, Stripe, and PayPal. Compared to those competitors, Adyen’s major selling point will be its interchange-plus(plus) pricing for Visa and Mastercard. This comes with the trade-off of spending more on American Express and Discover transactions, however.

Adyen’s high volume of complaints keeps me from recommending it too enthusiastically. My overall impression is that Adyen is still not actively pursuing small merchants at the individual level. If you’re going to give Adyen a try, I’d suggest going in with ample technical expertise and a lot of patience.

Looking for alternatives? Check out our picks for best credit card processing companies.

Credit Card Processor Review Methodology

We evaluate and test each payment processor that we review at Merchant Maverick, placing special emphasis on certain key characteristics in order to generate our granular ratings for merchant accounts and credit card processors.

For payment processing reviews, we use a 24-point rubric to evaluate the provider. First, we look at pricing structure – interchange plus, subscription-based, tiered, or hybrid – giving the most points to providers that provide fair, transparent pricing and docking those that rely on tiered models. Then we examine rates, the presence and transparency of early termination fees, and any additional fees.

We also look at contract length and fairness and test out sales staff and customer service channels ourselves to ensure that the company uses reputable, above-the-board sales techniques. Finally, we take the company’s online reputation into account, reading customer reviews and comments.

Read more about how we rate payment processors.

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