Soar Payments Review

Pros

• Well suited for high-risk merchants
• Automated custom price quoting
• Automated application process
• Fast underwriting
• No application fees

Cons

• Only available for US-based businesses
• Pricing not disclosed on the site

What Is Soar Payments?

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.

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 & Services

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.

Features Overview

• Merchant Accounts: Soar offers merchant accounts to low, mid, and high-risk merchants. After determining which bank is the best fit for your business based on your risk profile, Soar will pre-approve your account within 24 hours. In three to five business days, you can be fully approved with an underwritten contract and ready to start taking payments. The process is faster for low-risk merchants, however.
• Hardware Options: Soar offers the PAX A920 smart terminal, which features a color touchscreen, a built-in receipt printer, and support for EMV & NFC-based payment methods. A mobile credit card reader is also available. Pricing is not disclosed, but we know that the company uses terminal leases, which we are not big fans of (learn about some alternatives to leasing your terminal).

• Payment Gateways: For processing via MOTO or eCommerce, Soar Payments offers merchants a choice between the ever-popular Authorize.Net, the NMI Gateway, and USAePay for accepting and processing online transactions.
• eCommerce Integrations: Expect the standard and plentiful shopping cart integrations that come with the above gateways. Custom integrations are also available.
• ACH & eCheck Processing: Even high-risk businesses can access the ACH and eCheck processing services.
• Chargeback Management & Fraud Prevention: One of the most common reasons a particular industry is labeled high-risk is the potential for lots of chargebacks. Your account could be shut down if your chargeback ratio creeps too high. Soar Payments partners with Chargeback.com to integrate chargeback mitigating features into the NMI payment gateway. The resulting package is dubbed Chargeback Armor and includes chargeback alert emails, representing services for fighting illegitimate chargebacks, plus the iSpyFraud filter to detect fraud, screen suspicious transactions, and block suspicious activity.
• Acceptance Of High-Risk Merchants: Soar Payments takes many different types of high-risk industries, but it doesn’t take them all! Some industries it does accept include CBD, subscription boxes, digital streaming, fantasy sports, pawn brokers, firearms, and web design. Prohibited businesses include adult, debt relief, gambling, offshore companies, and businesses with very poor credit. If you’re on the Terminated Merchant File or MATCH List, the company is happy to help walk merchants through the process of getting removed from the list, with all the appropriate action and careful documentation that entails. At that point, Soar can likely board you with a high-risk package.

Fees & Rates

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.

Pricing Overview

Soar Payments offers 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, as well as a free credit card processing terminal or mobile swiping device.

For mid- and high-risk businesses, tiered pricing is the standard model. Mid-qualified and non-qualified rates vary widely depending on risk, volume, etc.

Other Fees

Monthly fees vary depending on risk status but will include a monthly minimum and merchant on-file fee at a minimum. Other fees may include:

• Gateway fee
• Chargeback fees and services
• ACH debit
• Early termination fee

Sales & Advertising Transparency

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 we’ve noted above, Soar Payments has next to no specific pricing disclosures on 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, which usually means that pricing is too variable for it to provide any meaningful disclosures that would be valid for all potential customers.

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.

Contract Length & Early Termination Fee

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 early termination fee, holds back the company’s score in this category.

Customer Service & Technical Support

Soar Payments earns strong scores in this category, despite not offering every type of support channel out there. 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.

Soar Payments Reviews, Complaints, & Common Problems

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.

Final Verdict On Soar Payments

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.

Although the 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.

High-Risk Merchant Account Ratings Methodology

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	Visit Site

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	Visit Site

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.