There are so many processing companies, they all seem to be doing more or less the same thing, and they all have both glowing testimonials and terrible complaints. How are you supposed to choose the best company under these circumstances? Who can you trust? Read on to find out.
While merchant account fees are definitely irritating (and expensive!), they're often an inevitable cost of doing business. Even if you sign up with a payment service provider like Square that doesn't charge monthly fees, you'll still be paying the costs associated with maintaining your account in the form of higher transaction processing rates.
Credit card surcharging has rapidly gained in popularity in recent years as court decisions, and legislative changes have gradually removed legal barriers to the practice. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has greatly accelerated this trend. Nonetheless, the question remains: Should you add a surcharge?
There's a lot to love about Helcim. What we love is that you won't have to worry about the bait-and-switch tactics and long-term, binding contracts that plague the industry. Helcim distinguishes itself from many other providers by offering no binding contracts, exclusive interchange-plus pricing, consistently good customer service, and low account fees.
Choosing a high-risk merchant account provider isn’t the same as working with other payment processors. You can expect different pricing and contract terms — but you shouldn’t compromise on customer service. Here are six great providers that offer great service, fair pricing, and reasonable contracts for small businesses.
First Data (now Fiserv) is a massive company offering everything a merchant could need for payment processing. But small businesses will pay a premium for access, whereas large businesses might be able to negotiate a fair deal.
Payment Depot is best known for its use of subscription or membership-based pricing, a spinoff of the interchange-plus model. While it isn’t the only provider in the industry to offer this type of pricing, Payment Depot’s reputation for open, honest sales practices and excellent customer support put it ahead of many of its competitors using this relatively new pricing model.
Authorize.Net’s payment gateway is one of the most versatile tools for eCommerce. It’s got a solid feature set, including recurring billing and echeck/ACH processing. However, deciding where to get your gateway from is often the biggest challenge. Here’s what you need to know about your options.
At Dharma, you can count on consistently fair and predictable pricing. The company advertises all of its standard rate and fee information publicly on its website. You can also expect high-quality, friendly, personalized service and support from the Dharma team.
With multiple pricing plans tailored to all business sizes, a free gateway, multiple chargeback protection features, and a boatload of other features, there’s a lot to like about CDGcommerce. But you should still make sure it’s a good fit for your business.
Despite some areas of needed improvement, Heartland’s services are surprisingly comprehensive, seamlessly blending tools for a brick-and-mortar location, eCommerce businesses of all kinds, and mobile enterprises. The problem is that its current payment structure seems to lead to some trouble with salespeople not properly disclosing fees, which causes problems further down the line.
Moneris offers an impressive lineup of products and services for Canadian merchants. It provides just about every kind of hardware and software product you would need to run either a retail or online business. However, the company’s lengthy contracts and hefty early termination fees bring it down a notch.
Does Electronic Merchant Systems offer everything you need for your small business? Possibly, but it comes at a high cost. Unless you’re prepared to negotiate aggressively on your own behalf, you’ll probably pay more than you need to. Read our review to see why you should look elsewhere.
The payment processing industry is very competitive, with a huge number of providers vying for your business. While only a few are truly excellent, many others are just awful. Paya currently falls somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, sticking close to the industry standard in terms of pricing and contract terms, but not offering any exceptional products or services that distinguish it from other providers.
Bank of America Merchant Services has taken several positive steps to improve both the quality of its services and its reputation among merchants. It’s done away with long-term contracts, eliminated early termination fees, and introduced a flat-rate pricing plan with no monthly fees that will appeal to small-business users. It’s also instituted 24/7 customer support and completely revamped its hardware lineup, eliminating Clover products and replacing them with universal devices that can be reprogrammed, if necessary.
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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.
Our unbiased reviews and content are supported in part by affiliate partnerships, and we adhere to strict guidelines to preserve editorial integrity. The editorial content on this page is not provided by any of the companies mentioned and has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone.
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