Soar Payments specializes in finding card processing homes for hard-to-place businesses, and is a good option for companies across all risk levels.
WRITTEN & RESEARCHED BY
Expert Contributor
Last updated onUpdated
REVIEWED BY
Expert Contributor
| Total Rating | 3.9 |
|---|---|
| Fees & Rates3.8 | |
| Products & Services3.9 | |
| Contract3.3 | |
| Sales & Advertising Transparency4.7 | |
| Customer Service4.4 | |
| User Reviews4.0 | |
Table of Contents
Soar Payments specializes in finding card processing homes for hard-to-place businesses that most merchant account providers typically won’t work with. If you need a feature-rich, high-risk credit card processor, Soar Payments may be just the right fit. In fact, Soar scored a spot on our list of the best high-risk merchant services providers for small businesses.
Whether due to a historically high percentage of chargebacks, irregular high-ticket sales, or just lots of industry regulations, banks are less likely to approve certain business types for merchant accounts. Don’t take it personally if your business has been labeled a high-risk business; it’s not necessarily your fault! You’re even more likely to be considered mid or high-risk if you have an eCommerce or mail/telephone order (MOTO) business. That’s simply because most of your transactions are card-not-present and thus more susceptible to fraud.
While we’re impressed with many aspects of Soar Payments, its lack of pricing disclosures and its very high early termination fee hold back its overall score a bit.
| Products & Services3.9 |
|---|
| Software & Services 4.3 |
| Hardware & Equipment 3.4 |
The company offers a full range of products and services to meet the needs of any business, earning Soar Payments a good score in this category. Soar’s score could be even higher if it offered a virtual terminal or support for cryptocurrency payments, however.
If you’ve been classified as high-risk, you probably have one or more of the following characteristics:
Soar Payments takes many different types of high-risk industries, but it doesn’t take them all! Here is a sample of industries it does accept:
The above is not an exhaustive list of the industries Soar accepts, but we’ve listed some of the more popular options.
Prohibited businesses include adult, bitcoin, debt collection, debt relief, gambling, hate content, offshore companies, tech support, or businesses with very poor credit. This is also not an exhaustive list of prohibited businesses, however.
Before we discuss Soar’s pricing, we asked the company if it accepts merchants on the Terminated Merchant File or MATCH List. The CEO explained that while they could technically take these clients offshore, they’ve decided to forgo that level of risk. Instead, they are happy to help walk merchants through the process of getting themselves removed from the list, with all the appropriate action and careful documentation that entails. At that point, Soar can likely board them with a high-risk package.
| Fees & Rates3.8 |
|---|
| Pricing 3.6 |
| Affordability 4.0 |
Like most high-risk specialists, Soar Payments does not disclose any specific pricing information on its website due to the bewildering number of options offered by its many processing partners. You’ll need to obtain a rate quote from the company to get a more accurate idea of your overall costs. Soar makes this easy with its Instant Online Quote system, which will automatically generate a customized quote for your business once you provide the required information.
Were Soar Payments to offer a bit more in terms of pricing disclosures (or at least some common fees), it could boost its score in this section.
Soar Payments offers transparent, interchange-plus pricing for low-risk businesses. Rates are not disclosed upfront, however, and will depend on your sales volume. Soar does provide an instant price quote with DocuSign for low-risk accounts. Additionally, low-risk accounts receive free credit card processing terminals or mobile swiping devices, but be sure to read the contract before signing it!
These vary depending on risk status but will include a monthly minimum and merchant on-file fee at a minimum. Fees may include:
Keep in mind that high-risk pricing is variable based on your situation and that you won’t know how it stacks up against competitors unless you compare multiple quotes. You also must consider the account’s overall value based on its full suite of services and features. This is especially true if your business lacks the staff hours and solid accounting department needed to manage chargebacks effectively.
| Sales & Advertising Transparency4.7 |
|---|
| Sales Practices 5.0 |
| Web Presence 3.2 |
It’s always a good sign when you email a company’s sales department and receive a response from the CEO the same day.
The Soar Payments CEO was patient with all our questions, which scores an immediate point toward a transparent company culture. With a relatively small staff and no independent agents to wrangle, there’s a greater likelihood this open attitude has permeated throughout the company. Accordingly, we’re giving Soar excellent marks in this section.
With such a small staff, the company relies heavily on its website to market accounts and sign up merchants. The site includes an online application feature that allows you to submit the required information about your business and receive a quote once you’ve sent it in. It only takes about five minutes to complete the application, so this is an easy way to get a quote that you can easily compare against what other vendors have offered you.
As convenient as this process is, there are a few reasons to be cautious. For one thing, online applications are designed to be convenient for the provider — not you. Soar Payments doesn’t just send you a rate quote when you submit an online application — it sends you a complete contract that you can sign electronically. It’s all too easy for a new merchant to sign the document and send it back. Don’t do this!
You need to review your entire contract very carefully before you sign anything. If your agreement includes an initial two-year term, you’ll be legally committed to that term the moment you sign it and send it back.
You should also be cautious of any provider offering instant or rapid approval of your merchant account. While this can seem like a convenient feature if you need to start accepting credit cards right away, you should be aware that instant approval involves cutting some corners. The underwriting process is designed to ensure that your business will be a good fit for your processor, and it takes time to complete.
High-risk accounts take even more time, especially if the processor needs to check your personal credit and your business’s processing history. When this process is completed after you’ve already signed up for an account, there will be a much higher risk that your account will be quickly shut down for one reason or another once you start processing transactions.
For more in-depth information about the risks involved with instant approval for high-risk merchant accounts, please check out what you need to know about high-risk merchant accounts with instant approval.
As we’ve noted above, Soar Payments has recently removed most (if not all) of the specific pricing disclosures from its website. While this is a little disappointing, we realize that there is usually no one-size-fits-all pricing solution when working with the high-risk business community. Soar Payments and other high-risk providers have to work with a large variety of banks and back-end processors to get you approved for an account.
This usually means that pricing is too variable for it to provide any meaningful disclosures that would be valid for all potential customers. Fortunately, the online application process allows you to get a customized quote for your business in very little time. Just be sure not to sign anything until you’re confident you’re ready to commit.
Overall, Soar Payments comes across as an honest company that earnestly strives to help high-risk merchants find a processing home. Combine this with its “take-it-or-leave-it” interchange-plus rate for lower-risk accounts, and you get the sense that Soar won’t pressure you to sign up if it’s not a good fit for your business.
| Contract3.3 |
|---|
| Commitment 2.8 |
| ETF & Other Fees 3.8 |
In outlining Soar’s contract stipulations, I’ll begin again with mid-to-high-risk accounts and then quickly summarize low-risk accounts. This was all the information we received over the phone directly from Soar’s CEO at the time of our last review. You should always read your contract to determine what, if any, fees for early termination apply as well as your contract length.
While Soar’s contract terms aren’t too bad for a high-risk processor, these terms aren’t spelled out on the website. That, plus the very high $495 early termination fee, holds back Soar Payments’s score in this category.
If you’re high-risk, note that a rolling reserve account will probably be required to protect your processor. Soar pointed out that its rolling reserves have predetermined caps, at which point no more funds will be held from your daily batches regardless of the established percentage that usually comes out. The CEO also mentioned that the reserve period is seven months and that this fund release time is shorter than most other high-risk providers. Funds in a rolling reserve will be released on the pre-established schedule if you end your contract.
To sum up, Soar’s high-risk terms are pretty good. That hefty early termination fee is no fun, but I’m not too surprised it’s in place. While we’d generally steer you clear of long-term contracts, if you’re high enough risk, you might have one as part of your agreement regardless of which provider you use. As far as contracts go, you could do a lot worse than Soar as a high-risk merchant.
Now, if you’re low-risk, the outlook is much brighter:
Perfect! That’s just what we like to see!
| Customer Service4.4 |
|---|
| Personal Support 4.5 |
| Self-Service 4.2 |
Soar Payments earns excellent scores in this category. Regular business hours for Soar Payments are 8 AM to 8 PM Eastern Time, and each of the employees at this small company has a direct line. If you can’t get in touch with your account representative for after-hours problems, you’ll be redirected to your back-end processor.
Of course, you can also contact customer service at the third-party service provider behind a technical issue. In my experience, Soar also responds to emails promptly.
Soar’s website has a general FAQ section that covers a few common questions for all risk levels. Where Soar really “soars” as an industry expert, however, is in the high-risk section of the website. I learned a ton myself as I perused articles on around 30 individual high-risk business sectors.
Soar Payments has also replaced its blog with PayPod, a podcast dedicated to discussing payments with numerous leaders from throughout the processing industry. If you want to learn more about how the processing industry works, this is an excellent resource.
| User Reviews4.0 |
|---|
| Customer Feedback 4.0 |
| Review Site Aggregate 4.0 |
High-risk merchant account providers frequently receive more than their fair share of criticism from merchants due to the additional challenges of serving the high-risk community. That isn’t the case with Soar Payments, however. It has a sterling online reputation that any provider would envy. Accordingly, the company earns strong marks here.
What’s remarkable is that we found no negative reviews for Soar Payments at the Better Business Bureau or any other of the several consumer review sites we searched. While this doesn’t automatically mean that every merchant is or will be happy, it suggests that Soar Payments knows how to quickly de-escalate any issues and likely has very clear communication with its merchants.
Soar Payments has been accredited by the BBB since 2018 and currently has an A+ rating. The company has remarkably zero complaints within the past three years. While the company had five positive reviews from customers at the time of our last review update, there are currently no reviews posted to the company’s BBB page.
While Soar Payments doesn’t have reviews at some of the other larger customer review sites, we checked its Facebook page and found three 5-star reviews and no negative complaints so far. That’s a great sign!
If you’re a high-risk merchant, it can feel like you don’t have a lot of trustworthy options. Some providers know that high-risk merchants don’t have many choices, and they prey on your sense of desperation. From what we’ve gathered from the company via our one-on-one conversations, research, and its reputation at the BBB, Soar Payments has reasonable rates and fees while treating its merchants quite well.
We can’t tell you exactly what your pricing package will be with Soar Payments if you’re a high-risk business. However, we feel confident that Soar is a solid option for non-traditional merchants by all important measures of value.
Although the $495 early termination fee (for some accounts) is rough, Soar’s high-risk contract terms as a whole are very reasonable. You’re probably going to be stuck with tiered pricing, but that’s also fairly standard among high-risk accounts. Meanwhile, Soar has upped its account approval rate and subsequent account stability by working with Chargeback.com and the NMI gateway to add additional protective features.
While we appreciate how forthcoming company representatives were with us in person, Soar Payments could boost its overall rating if it made more of these disclosures public on its website.
However, my instinct is that Soar Payments is a good option for companies across all risk levels and could be great at mid-to-high volumes. Be sure to check out some other top merchant account providers to make direct comparisons based on your situation.
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.
The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆
Soar Payments |
|---|
After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Soar Payments for yourself.
The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆
Soar Payments |
|---|
After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Soar Payments for yourself.
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The vendors that appear on this list were chosen by subject matter experts on the basis of product quality, wide usage and availability, and positive reputation.
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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Our team of experts spends hours on every review so that we can find the best companies to recommend to our readers. Soar Payments made the cut.
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