CCBill offers transparent pricing and a powerful platform for billing & recurring payments. They even work with high-risk businesses, especially those in the adult entertainment industry.
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REVIEWED BY
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| Total Rating | 4.6 |
|---|---|
| Fees & Rates5.0 | |
| Products & Services3.9 | |
| Contract4.8 | |
| Sales & Advertising Transparency4.9 | |
| Customer Service4.6 | |
| User Reviews4.0 | |
Table of Contents
CCBill is one of the oldest merchant services providers specializing in eCommerce in the payments industry. The company offers full-service merchant accounts and an integrated payments platform centered around its proprietary payment gateway — with no monthly fee.
Originally supporting eCommerce businesses only. CCBill now supports omnichannel businesses as well — brick-and-mortar retailers that also take orders through their websites can now sign up. The company also specializes in processing international transactions and can accept payments from 45 countries, including the US, Canada, and most European nations.
While its website advertises its services to nonprofits and ordinary eCommerce businesses, CCBill focuses primarily on adult-oriented goods and services, including streaming and live cams. If this is your business and you can’t get an account with other top credit card processors, it’s worth considering CCBill. High-risk merchant accounts can be shady territory, but fortunately, CCBill reviews and CCBill.com complaints trend in the right direction.
Overall, CCBill earns a score of 4.6 out of 5 stars, and we recommend the company to businesses in the adult entertainment field.
While CCBill provides “discounted” rates for nonprofits, the best credit card processors for nonprofits will give most nonprofits a better deal.
| Products & Services3.9 |
|---|
| Software & Services 4.3 |
| Hardware & Equipment 3.4 |
CCBill covers pretty much all the bases for eCommerce. With retail POS also now supported, CCBill can adequately cover a business that makes sales both on- and offline.
CCBill earns a good score in this category, but its lack of support for cryptocurrency payments (which are more commonly used in the adult entertainment industry than in other industries) holds it back from scoring even higher.
As a payment processor, CCBill’s core features revolve around allowing businesses to take credit cards and similar non-cash payments.
When it comes to payment processing, not all businesses are treated equally. While CCBill doesn’t serve many high-risk business types, they do provide services to the following industries:
Since CCBill’s high-risk clientele have fairly specific needs, the company offers services that can make it easier for adult businesses and entertainers to implement their preferred payment models.
Services include the following:
| Fees & Rates5.0 |
|---|
| Pricing 5.0 |
| Affordability 5.0 |
Even the best high-risk providers usually don’t disclose specific rates and fees on their websites. That’s because they work with multiple back-end processors to find one that will accept your business. There is so much variability in rates and fees that it’s not practical to advertise specific numbers.
CCBill is unique in this regard, as it does disclose its most common rates on its website. We’re giving CCBill an excellent score in this category mainly due to this uncommon transparency. It may be the single most transparent high-risk processor around.
Be aware that these are probably the lowest rates available — you might very well end up paying more. Just remember that while these rates may seem sky-high, you’re always going to pay a premium for payment processing as a high-risk business.
CCBill advertises three standard flat-rate plans, each designed for a particular type of business. There’s also an option for customized pricing available to high-volume businesses and features either customized flat-rate or interchange-plus pricing. Here are the highlights of the standard plans:
| Plan | Processing Costs | Requirements |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Pricing | 3.9% + $0.55, 2% fee w/recurring transactions | Must not be categorized as high-risk |
| High-risk Pricing | 5.9% + $0.55 | High-risk business, no adult-oriented businesses |
| Adult Pricing | 10.8% to 14.5%, annual fee $1,000 | Adult-oriented business, including live cams |
| Donate | 3.9% + $0.55 | 501(c)(3) organizations |
| Direct | 5.9% + $0.55 (debit cards only) | No restrictions |
CCBill does not charge an account setup fee or monthly account fees for any of these plans. There is no monthly minimum or weekly minimum requirement. However, depending on your plan, there’s a minimum transaction size starting from $2.95. The Adult plan comes with a hefty annual fee, but on the bright side, there’s no fee for chargebacks or refunds.
There’s no cross-border fee for any of the plans.
You can find more details about pricing on the Pricing and Fees page on CCBill’s website.
| Sales & Advertising Transparency4.9 |
|---|
| Sales Practices 5.0 |
| Web Presence 4.6 |
Almost uniquely among high-risk processors, CCBill has a very transparent website. The site features reasonably transparent disclosures, especially regarding various CCBill charges. We’re giving CCBill an excellent rating in this category.
The company doesn’t appear to use independent sales agents to sell CCBill accounts. Instead, it seems to rely on an in-house sales team. We prefer to see this because in-house agents are generally much better trained and supervised than independent ones. We haven’t found any complaints from merchants about the company’s sales practices, so you can expect that your agent will be both helpful and honest when working with you.
As a tech-focused company, CCBill has a broad social media presence, with accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. While the content is essentially the same on all these platforms, it’s frequently updated and offers quite a bit of useful information for both prospective and existing clients. The company’s YouTube channel features a few educational videos for its FlexChat platform.
| Contract4.8 |
|---|
| Commitment 5.0 |
| ETF & Other Fees 4.6 |
We’re giving CCBill very strong marks in this category mainly because the CCBill agreement can be terminated at any time by either side and because there’s no early termination fee in its contracts. Again, this is highly unusual for the high-risk processing industry, where three-year contracts with ETFs of up to $500 are the norm.
It takes a little digging, but CCBill does disclose its Terms and Conditions (T&C) and Merchant Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) on its website. Other places on the website refer to a signup package, so be aware that, depending on the wording, the package could modify the T&C or the AUP. We recommend that you always read a merchant agreement carefully before you sign up.
| Customer Service4.6 |
|---|
| Personal Support 4.8 |
| Self-Service 3.8 |
CCBill offers genuine 24/7/365 customer support via telephone, email, and online chat. Again, a lack of complaints from merchants about this area suggests that the support provided is of high quality. Accordingly, we’re giving CCBill a high score here.
For self-help, the company also offers its CCBill Merchant Support and CCBill Knowledgebase, as well as the aforementioned pricing page where you can look up CCBill charges. These are valuable resources and should be your first stop if you need to troubleshoot a problem. While they won’t solve every issue, they provide clear instructions for solving common problems and might save you from having to contact customer support.
| User Reviews4.0 |
|---|
| Customer Feedback 4.0 |
| Review Site Aggregate 4.0 |
On the whole, CCBill’s public reception is pretty good, which is why we’re giving the company strong scores here.
CCBill has been accredited by the BBB since 2014 and currently has an A+ rating. The company has had 28 complaints filed within the last three years, with 5 of those complaints filed within the previous twelve months. Its BBB profile also includes 35 reviews filed by consumers, with an average of 1.11 out of 5 stars. However, many of these complaints come from the consumer side of things, not the merchant side.
For a company of CCBill’s size, this is actually a relatively average number of complaints, although the volume of recent complaints could be cause for concern. Complaints include:
Despite all the complaints from consumers who have been misdirected at CCBill, the company does earn a couple of positive reviews on the BBB’s website and on Trustpilot. Here are some of the things merchants liked about CCBill.
CCBill stands out from its high-risk competitors by offering transparent pricing and very flexible contract terms. Upfront rate disclosures are almost unheard of among high-risk specialists, so we’re very impressed with the company for letting you know ahead of time what you can expect to pay. On the other hand, its rates are very high, especially its low-risk and nonprofit pricing. Indeed, it would be hard to recommend CCBill to low-risk businesses for this reason.
We do, however, recommend CCBill as a good merchant account provider for high-risk eCommerce merchants, particularly those in the business categories that the company specializes in serving. Adult-oriented businesses don’t get a whole lot of love in the payment processing department. That they have the option of using a processor as transparent as CCBill is borderline shocking.
CCBill earns a commendable overall score of 4.6 out of 5 stars. We like the transparent processing rates, lack of long-term contracts or early termination fees, lack of monthly account fees, and honest sales practices. We’re also impressed by the general lack of negative feedback from merchants. While we’d be more impressed if the processing rates weren’t so high, high rates are the norm for high-risk processing — and at least these rates are fully disclosed.
If you’re a high-risk eCommerce merchant, be sure to check out CCBill. You might also want to check out our top-rated high-risk providers.
We research, evaluate, and test each high-risk payment processor that we review at Merchant Maverick, placing special emphasis on key characteristics to generate granular ratings for high-risk merchant account providers.
High-risk merchant accounts, by definition, require the provider to take on more risk and liability; they tend to be more expensive overall than traditional merchant accounts, with more fees and limitations. For this reason, our high-risk rating methodology differs from our standard credit card processor rating methodology, so we don’t mislead our readers by comparing apples and oranges. Many businesses in high-risk industries cannot qualify for a normal payment processing account. That said, there are good and bad options available in the high-risk space, and we judge these high-risk providers against each other to provide the most balanced assessment.
High-risk services can be complex, so we use a 24-point rubric to evaluate each 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 high-risk merchant account providers.
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Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews. Each staff reviewer at Merchant Maverick is a subject matter expert with experience researching, testing, and evaluating small business software and services. The rating of this company or service is based on the author’s expert opinion and analysis of the product, and assessed and seconded by another subject matter expert on staff before publication. Merchant Maverick’s ratings are not influenced by affiliate partnerships.
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