Every processor.
Graded on evidence.

Kurv (formerly Electronic Merchant Systems)

Payment Processor

C+

A November 2025 rebrand of Electronic Merchant Systems, a Cleveland processor trading since 1988 and now owned by private equity. The new brand publishes real sample rates and funds next business day, which is progress. The complaint record underneath it has not reset, and the catches are in the footnotes rather than the headline.

SpotOn

POS System

B-

A restaurant-first point-of-sale and payments platform founded in 2017, with published plan rates, next-morning funding and unusually well-regarded support. The catch is the contract: a two-year minimum on its headline plan, a mid-2026 rate increase applied to existing merchants, and cancellation terms it does not publish.

SMB Global

High-Risk Specialist

C+

A small Utah high-risk shop that places domestic and offshore merchant accounts for hard-to-approve verticals. Reviewers who have dealt with it speak well of it, but almost nothing about the company is verifiable from primary sources — no rates, no contract terms, no BBB profile, no About page and no independent reviews at all.

Pricing clarity

1.0

Feature set

3.0

Ease of use

3.0

Segpay

High-Risk Specialist

B

A South Florida high-risk biller founded in 2005, registered with Visa as an internet payment service provider and with Mastercard as a payment facilitator, serving adult, dating, subscription and content merchants across the US, EU, UK and Australia. It publishes its settlement terms in detail and its rates not at all.

PayJunction

ISO

B+

A Santa Barbara ISO that has been processing since 2000, sells month-to-month with no cancellation fee, and has zero complaints on file with the BBB. The reservation is pricing: its published numbers are all 'as low as', and third-party accounts of its monthly fee flatly contradict each other.

Mollie

Payment Processor

B+

One of Europe's largest independent payment service providers, serving more than 250,000 businesses from Amsterdam and authorised by the Dutch central bank as an electronic money institution. It publishes its full price list, which almost nobody at its scale does, and it is in the middle of absorbing GoCardless in a €1.05 billion deal. It processes for Europe and the UK only, and account freezes are the recurring complaint.

pmtbox (formerly National Processing)

ISO

B-

A 2007-vintage Utah merchant services provider that spent years as one of the better-regarded small-business ISOs, rebranded to pmtbox, raised $15 million in 2026, and repositioned around enterprise e-commerce. The track record is real; the offering a small merchant would be buying today is much less clear than it was.

Pricing clarity

2.0

Feature set

3.5

Ease of use

3.5

Instabill

High-Risk Specialist

C+

A small New Hampshire high-risk shop that places merchant accounts with domestic and offshore banks for verticals mainstream acquirers refuse. It charges no application fee and is candid about rolling reserves — but it publishes no rates, is not BBB-accredited or rated, and leaves almost no verifiable public trail.

Pricing clarity

1.5

Feature set

3.0

Ease of use

3.0

GoDaddy Payments

Payment Processor

B

GoDaddy's in-house processor, built on the Poynt technology it bought in 2020. Flat published rates, no monthly fee and next-business-day payouts make it a genuinely competitive small-business option — provided you are willing to run your commerce inside GoDaddy's ecosystem.