Every processor.
Graded on evidence.

Talus Pay

ISO

B-

Talus Pay is a Dallas merchant-services organisation trading as FPT Operating Company, LLC. The business dates to 2006, when it was founded in Dallas as Future Payment Technologies; it took the Talus Pay name in February 2019 following a trademark dispute, and has since consolidated its acquisitions under the master brand Talus. Its Better Business Bureau file records a business start date of 2 December 2016 and accreditation since 10 April 2017 — dates that reflect the current LLC's registration rather than the origin of the business. It has been a portfolio company of the private-equity firm A&M Capital Partners since 2017 and has grown largely by acquisition: Prolific Business Solutions in 2018, three add-on deals during 2019, and Jobox.ai together with Clarus Merchant Services in January 2024. The corporate structure is unusually layered even by ISO standards — AMCP Payments Intermediate Company LLC does business as Talus Pay, Talus Payments, LTD Merchant Services, MSP Consulting, Granite Payment Alliance, Philadelphia Processing, City National Bank Merchant Services and Merchant Bank Partners, and the group is a registered ISO or MSP of Pinnacle Bank dba Synovus Bank, Citizens Bank N.A., Elavon and Esquire Bank. Talus sells a proprietary gateway called Talus Connect, the ReadyPoint point-of-sale line, mobile acceptance, and — through a partnership with Ingenico announced in December 2025 — a hardware-free SoftPOS tap-to-pay product for North America. It holds an A+ BBB rating. It publishes no rates, no fees and no contract terms anywhere.

Revolut Business

Payment Processor

B

Revolut Business is the merchant-acceptance arm of Revolut, the London fintech founded in 2015 by Nik Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko. It is unusual in this directory for a simple reason: it publishes a complete rate card. A merchant can read, before speaking to anyone, that in-person domestic consumer Visa and Mastercard transactions cost 0.8% + £0.02, that the same cards online cost 1% + £0.20, that commercial and international cards cost 2.6% + £0.02 in person and 2.8% + £0.20 online, that a Revolut Terminal is £169 + VAT and a Lite Terminal £129 + VAT, and that a chargeback dispute resolved in the merchant's favour returns £15. Acceptance is a sub-account of a Revolut Business account rather than a separate merchant account with a separate provider, so settlement lands in the same balance the business already banks from, in as little as 24 hours. The important limit is geographic: Revolut has offered acquiring across the UK and continental Europe since 2020–21 — its own January 2021 announcement put the count at 29 European countries, a figure it has not refreshed since — and launched a full merchant-acquiring suite in Australia during 2026. It publishes no United States card-acceptance rates. In March 2026 Revolut exited the Bank of England's mobilisation phase and received a full UK banking licence, roughly twenty months after being granted one with restrictions in July 2024.

Nexi

Payment Processor

B

Nexi S.p.A. is one of Europe's largest payments companies, headquartered in Milan and traded on Euronext Milan, and describes itself as Europe's PayTech. It was assembled through consolidation — most consequentially the merger with the Danish group Nets, completed on 1 July 2021, and the merger with the Italian rival SIA, effective 1 January 2022, which together were widely reported as creating the largest European paytech by EBITDA — and now runs three businesses: Merchant Solutions (acquiring and acceptance), Issuing Solutions (card issuing and processing for banks) and Digital Banking Solutions (clearing, open banking, ATM and network services). Adyen carries a far larger market value and Worldline has at times been described as Europe's largest acquirer by revenue, so "largest" depends on the measure — but the scale is not in doubt. In the first half of 2026 the group reported net revenues of €1,736 million, EBITDA of €870 million and merchant transactions of 10,225 million worth €423 billion, with Merchant Solutions accounting for roughly 56% of revenue. What a merchant will not find is a price. Nexi sells overwhelmingly through partner banks and through country brands rather than direct, so acceptance terms are set by whichever bank or channel signs the merchant, and there is no group rate card to compare. The company is also in transition at the top: in March 2026 it appointed Bernardo Mingrone, previously group chief financial officer and CEO of Nexi Payments, to succeed Paolo Bertoluzzo after a decade as chief executive, and the shares fell on the announcement.

Lavu

POS System

B-

Lavu is an Albuquerque restaurant technology company founded in 2010 by Andy Lim, and it has a genuine claim to being the first restaurant point-of-sale system built for the iPad. It raised a $15 million investment from Aldrich Capital Partners in 2015 — reported at the time as the largest Series A in New Mexico's history — and has since assembled a full restaurant stack around the till: a kitchen display system, online and contactless ordering, a dual-pricing (cash discount) programme, payroll, back office and its own payment processing under the name Lavu Pay. Through 2026 the company repositioned hard around Marty AI, an overnight analysis layer that reads point-of-sale, labour and inventory data and delivers a "Morning Deposit" briefing of recoverable cash to managers before service, published a comparative report on AI capabilities across seven major restaurant POS platforms in March 2026, and now markets itself as an intelligent financial operating system rather than a till. Independent reviewers place its plans at roughly $59, $129 and $279 a month with a three-year commitment; Lavu itself no longer publishes a pricing page.

Afterpay

Payment Processor

B

Afterpay is the buy-now-pay-later network founded in Sydney in October 2014 by Nick Molnar and Anthony Eisen, and owned since January 2022 by Block, Inc. — the deal was announced in August 2021 at a headline US$29 billion and completed on far less, reported at roughly US$14 billion in Class A shares, because Block's own share price had fallen in the interim. For a merchant, the proposition is straightforward: offer shoppers four interest-free instalments over six weeks, or a monthly plan over six or twelve months, get paid up front rather than waiting for the customer to finish paying, and let Afterpay carry the fraud and non-payment risk. In exchange the merchant pays a commission Afterpay does not publish — third-party reviewers consistently report a range around 4% to 6% plus roughly $0.30 per transaction, several times the cost of taking the same sale on a card. Afterpay's own merchant marketing claims a 58% increase in average order value among accepting merchants and $8.6 billion of incremental US sales delivered over the preceding twelve months. Under Block, the product has increasingly become a Cash App feature rather than a standalone checkout button: Afterpay Post-Purchase and, from 2026, Afterpay Pre-Purchase let Cash App Card holders convert everyday card spend into instalments at any merchant, whether or not that merchant has ever signed an Afterpay agreement.

Wave (Wave Financial)

Payment Processor

B-

Wave is a Toronto software company, started in April 2010, that gives away accounting and invoicing to very small businesses and makes its money when those invoices get paid. H&R Block bought it for $405 million in a deal that closed on 1 July 2019, and it has been a subsidiary ever since. Payments run at 2.9% plus 60 cents for Visa, Mastercard and Discover, 3.4% plus 60 cents for American Express, and 1% with a $1 minimum for bank payments, with no monthly fee on the free Starter plan; a $19-a-month Pro plan waives the 60-cent card fee on the first ten transactions each month and adds features. Card money lands in one to two business days, bank payments in one to seven, and eligible accounts can pull an instant payout to a debit card for a further 1%. Since November 2020 Wave has served the United States and Canada only. Its US card processing is powered by Adyen and Stripe, which Wave discloses in its own terms.

Riverside Payments

ISO

C+

Riverside Payments is an independent sales organisation in Vancouver, Washington, registered with the Better Business Bureau since 2014 and a registered ISO of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. of Concord, California. It sells merchant accounts to small and mid-sized US businesses through a field sales force, pairing card processing with point-of-sale hardware from Clover, Dejavoo, TouchBistro, Aldelo and NCR. Its pitch is built on two promises that recur throughout its marketing: free and secure point-of-sale or credit card machines, and help getting out of a contract with your existing processor. It publishes no rates, no fees and no contract terms. The public record is where the difficulty lies: the BBB records 256 complaints against the company in the last three years, 71 of them closed in the last twelve months, with consistent themes of savings that did not materialise, difficulty cancelling, and equipment that turned out to be financed through a separate, non-cancelable 48-month third-party lease rather than supplied free.

PaySimple

Payment Processor

B-

PaySimple is a Denver payments-and-billing platform for service businesses — the kind that invoice, take deposits and bill the same customers month after month rather than ring up a counter. Its own about page dates the business to 2006 and puts it at more than 22,000 businesses; the site footer carries a 2005 copyright and the Better Business Bureau file records a December 2006 start, so the exact birth year depends on which document you read. What matters more is the lineage: the company Eric Remer founded as PaySimple is the company that was incorporated as EverCommerce in 2016 and listed on Nasdaq in 2021. PaySimple was not bought by EverCommerce so much as it became it, and the brand now sits inside that group as one product among many — the BBB file is registered to "EverCommerce Solutions Inc., DBA PaySimple Inc." PaySimple is a registered ISO of Fifth Third Bank and of Wells Fargo Bank. Pricing is published in full and unusually plain: $79.95 a month with every feature included, 2.9% plus 30 cents on cards, 1% plus 30 cents on ACH, no contract and no cancellation fee.

Merchant Lynx Services

ISO

C

Merchant Lynx Services is a Florida independent sales organisation, operating from Palm Beach Gardens as the trading name of Groundhog Enterprises, Inc., which the Better Business Bureau records as having started in April 1999. It is a registered ISO/MSP of Esquire Bank, N.A. of Jericho, New York and a registered ISO of Deutsche Bank AG, New York, and it sells card processing, its own Lynx POS system, check guarantee, gift cards, digital check imaging and merchant cash advances to small and mid-sized businesses across retail, hospitality, healthcare, education, automotive and government. The company advertises itself as an Inc. 5000 business and claims a ranking of 21st among US acquirers. The terms behind that sales pitch are published on its own website and are unusually onerous: the merchant agreement runs an initial three-year term, renews automatically for successive three-year terms unless cancelled with 90 days' written notice, and carries a $495 early-termination fee that can be deducted straight from settlements. Equipment leases are separately non-cancelable. The BBB rates the business F and revoked its accreditation.