Every processor.
Graded on evidence.

Trustly is a Swedish open-banking payments company, launched in Stockholm in 2008, that moves money directly from a shopper's bank account to a merchant's — bypassing the card networks entirely. It is the largest pay-by-bank provider in the world by volume: its full year 2025 results report processed volume up 17.6% to SEK 1,059.0 billion, the first year it has carried more than $100 billion in total payment value, and it passed 120 million users in April 2026. Revenue, however, fell 12% on a constant-currency basis to SEK 2,427.7 million and it made a SEK 565.0 million loss after tax, a year into a 24-month transformation programme. It is regulated in Sweden and the UK, and in February 2022 the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority issued it a warning and a SEK 130 million fine for serious anti-money-laundering failings. It publishes no merchant pricing.

Trustly publishes no merchant rates in any market. Its US material argues the case for pay by bank against card costs without quoting its own price, and its guarantee documentation directs merchants to a sales representative or merchant success manager for pricing. Third-party sources describe European pricing around 1.5% of transaction value with a minimum per-transaction charge, but we could not corroborate that for the United States and would not rely on it. Expect an enterprise quote priced by volume, sector and how much guarantee cover you take.

Not published as a standard. Trustly's guarantee products are sold partly on the basis of quick cash flow, which indicates settlement timing is tied to which guarantee tier a merchant buys rather than being one published figure. Establish the settlement timetable and the guarantee tier together, because they are the same commercial decision.

★ 2.8 trustpilotRead review →

Spreedly

Payment Gateway

Spreedly is a payment orchestration platform and PCI-compliant card vault founded in 2007 and run from Durham, North Carolina. It does not process payments itself. It stores your customers' card credentials in its own vault, connects them to more than 140 payment gateways through one API, and routes, retries and optimises transactions across them. It reported annual gross merchandise volume expected to exceed $60 billion for 2025, up from $50 billion in 2024, across more than 400 customers in 100-plus countries. Entry pricing for the vault starts at $750 a month; everything above that is quoted. It is enterprise infrastructure, not a merchant account, and a small business should not be shopping for it.

Pricing clarity: 2.5
Feature set: 4.5
Ease of use: 3.5

Expert grade BRead review →

Klarna

Payment Processor

Klarna is a Swedish-founded, UK-parented digital bank and flexible payments provider that listed on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2025. Its full year 2025 results put it at $127.9 billion of gross merchandise volume, $3.5 billion of revenue, 118 million active consumers and 966,000 merchants. For a retailer it is not a merchant account — it is an additional payment method that sits alongside card acceptance, sold on the promise of higher conversion and larger baskets, and priced far above card interchange. Klarna publishes no US rate card, its dispute process runs on its own rules rather than the card networks', and it is defending a securities class action filed after its IPO.

Klarna publishes no US rate card. Third-party reviewers and merchant reports consistently describe a standard US rate of about 5.99% plus $0.30 per transaction for its pay-later products, with long-term financing quoted lower because Klarna earns interest from the shopper, and negotiated rates for large merchants. Treat those figures as reported rather than published — Klarna's own documentation says only that a fixed fee and a percentage fee are charged per capture, with the actual numbers shown in the merchant portal under each product's Rates tab.

Set per contract. Klarna's documentation describes a payout schedule plus a deliberate payout delay that acts as a buffer against returns — its own worked example is weekly Wednesday payouts with a one-week delay, so an order captured on a Friday settles the Wednesday of the following week. Settlement reports arrive the day after the payout is processed. Check both the schedule and the delay in your contract, because the delay is the number that determines your working capital.

★ 4.5 trustpilotRead review →

Inovio Payments

Payment Gateway

Inovio is a payment gateway aimed squarely at specialty and high-risk verticals — adult, firearms, e-cigarettes and vape, online gaming, online alcohol, credit repair, CBD, telemedicine, online pharmacy and nutraceuticals — alongside ordinary retail and SaaS. It is a wholly owned brand of North, the company formerly called North American Bancard, which launched it in April 2016, and it is a registered ISO of BMO Harris Bank. Its own site says 'Since 1992', a date that belongs to its parent group and to its sister brand Humboldt Merchant Services rather than to Inovio. It publishes no rates, no fees and no contract terms, and it has no Better Business Bureau profile of its own.

Inovio publishes no processing rates, gateway fees, setup fees or monthly fees anywhere on its site. Pricing is quoted per merchant against the business type, volume and risk profile — normal for high-risk, but it means there is no benchmark to check a quote against. Ask for the gateway subscription, the per-transaction gateway fee and the processing markup over interchange as three separate numbers; a single blended percentage in this category is almost always hiding the markup.

Expert grade B-Read review →

FastSpring

Payment Processor

B+

FastSpring is a merchant of record for software, SaaS, games and digital products, founded in Santa Barbara in 2005 and trading as Bright Market, LLC. It becomes the legal seller of your product, which means it — not you — owns the payment relationship, the sales tax and VAT obligation, the fraud loss and the chargeback. Its own site claims more than 3,200 customers, over $2 billion in transactions a year, 200-plus regions, 35-plus currencies and 21-plus languages. It holds a BBB A- and is twenty-one years old, both unusual in this category. It publishes no rates.

FastSpring publishes no rates. Its pricing page describes a flat-rate revenue-share model that varies by transaction type and volume, with no subscription fee, no minimum volume and everything included in one price, and directs prospects to sales for a quote. Third-party reviewers — several of them competitors — cite a baseline near 5.9% plus $0.95 per transaction, rising toward 8.9% for low-volume or higher-risk accounts. We could not corroborate those figures independently and present them only as reported.

Three schedules are offered — twice per month (the default, on the 15th and at month end), monthly on the 15th, and weekly. A standard 14-day settlement delay applies to all transactions to allow for refunds and chargebacks, so funds are not available the moment they are earned. If a payout date falls on a weekend or US bank holiday the transfer starts the next business day.

Expert grade B+Read review →

TouchBistro

POS System

C+

TouchBistro is an iPad-based restaurant point of sale system from Toronto, used by more than 16,000 restaurants and acquired by Constellation Software's Harris division in July 2026. Operators generally like the software. What sinks the grade is the commercial relationship: annual agreements that auto-renew, an F rating with the Better Business Bureau after dozens of unanswered complaints, and a cancellation process that generates more grievances than any other aspect of the product.

Company states next business day for merchants banking with Chase, and 1 to 4 business days with other financial institutions.

★ 1.5 trustpilotRead review →

SignaPay

ISO

Expert grade B-Read review →

SignaPay is an independent sales organization in Irving, Texas, best known for PayLo, its dual-pricing program that shows a cash price and a card price at the point of sale so the card cost lands on the customer who chose to pay by card. It has held BBB accreditation since 2008 and an A+ rating, but it publishes no rates, and third-party reviewers consistently describe three-year agreements with auto-renewal and an early termination fee.

Pricing clarity: 2.0
Feature set: 3.5
Ease of use: 3.5

SecureGlobalPay

High-Risk Specialist

SecureGlobalPay is a Texas-based merchant account provider specialising in high-risk and hard-to-place businesses — firearms, tobacco and vape, adult, dating, supplements, travel, ticketing, credit repair and collections — across the US, Canada, the EU and the UK. Its BBB record is clean, and it advertises interchange-plus pricing with no long-term contract, but it publishes no actual rates and its independent review footprint is too thin to corroborate much.