Every processor.
Graded on evidence.

A London-headquartered, Israeli-founded fintech-as-a-service platform that sells collection, payouts and multi-currency accounts through one API. Its 2025 purchase of PayU's Latin America and Africa business for $610 million gave it direct local acquiring in six Latin American countries plus Nigeria and South Africa — genuinely hard-to-reach markets. It is built for platforms and marketplaces rather than small merchants, publishes almost no acquiring pricing, and its public merchant reviews are poor.

Rapyd does publish full rates for several Latin American markets, which is unusual and useful: Chile at 3.49% per transaction, Colombia at 3.29% + COP 300 (plus local income tax, ICA and VAT withholdings), and Peru at 3.40% + PEN 0.69, each with per-method minimums. These are card-not-present local-method rates for those countries and are not indicative of what a US or European merchant would be quoted.

★ 3 trustpilotRead review →

Paddle

A London merchant of record for software, SaaS and AI companies, founded in 2012 and used by more than 6,000 digital product businesses by its own July 2025 count. It publishes one flat price — 5% + 50¢ — and in exchange becomes the legal seller of your product, taking on global sales tax and VAT registration, filing and liability. That is a real transfer of risk, and it is expensive: roughly double a card processor's rate, paid out once a month rather than daily.

5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction, published on the pricing page, with no monthly fee and no migration fee. That single rate covers payment processing, global sales tax and VAT compliance, subscription billing, fraud and chargeback protection and support. Paddle notes that products under $10, and merchants who need invoicing, should contact it for custom pricing, and custom rates below 5% are reported to be available at high volume.

Monthly, not daily. Paddle processes payouts on the 1st of each month and sends them by the 15th, then up to three working days to arrive depending on method. Payouts go by wire transfer or Payoneer. There is no on-demand withdrawal — this is the single biggest operational difference between Paddle and an ordinary payment processor, and it needs to be modelled into your cash flow before you migrate.

★ 3.9 trustpilotRead review →

Merchant One

ISO

C+

A Miami Beach independent sales organization, incorporated in 2002 and bought by Fiserv in December 2022 for about $300 million — a fact almost no review of it mentions, and one that undercuts its own "we're not a broker or middleman" claim. It publishes headline rates, which is rare for an ISO, but they are qualified-tier rates on a tiered plan, and its Trustpilot score of 4.9 and its BBB customer-review average of 1.02 across 56 reviews describe two different companies.

Ecommerce is offered but not separately priced on the site. Merchant One states that interchange-plus is available on request — ask for it, because it is the only structure on offer where the downgrade tiers cannot be used against you.

Next-day funding is advertised on the home page. Independent reviewers report that in practice deposits often land two to three days later than advertised — treat next-day as a best case rather than a commitment.

★ 4.9 trustpilotRead review →

Humboldt Merchant Services

High-Risk Specialist

One of the oldest specialty merchant account providers in the United States — writing accounts for adult, CBD, firearms, credit repair, online pharmacy, gambling, telemedicine and travel since the early 1990s. It holds a BBB A+ and has been accredited since 2011, with 15 complaints in the last three years — low for this segment, but not the near-empty file some reviews suggest, and almost all of them are about reserve funds being held. Three things to know: it publishes no pricing at all, it holds reserves that merchants say run into six figures, and it is now a North brand, so a quote from Humboldt and a quote from North American Bancard are not two independent quotes.

Not published. Humboldt quotes every account individually — normal for high-risk underwriting, where the rate depends on the vertical, the chargeback history and the processing volume. Its own site says only that specialty accounts "typically come with slightly higher fees." Third-party reviewers report a range of roughly 1.00% to 4.99%; that figure appears in only one place we could find and should be treated as an indication of spread, not a quote.

Expert grade B-Read review →

Heartland Payment Systems

A large US small-business processor founded in 1997, bought by Global Payments for $4.3 billion in 2016 and now openly in the middle of being retired as a brand — Global Payments' own page is headed "Heartland Payment Systems is now Global Payments." It still sells under the Heartland name at heartland.us, still runs the Merchant Bill of Rights it invented, and still publishes no pricing. Signing today means signing with a brand that is being folded away around you.

Not published. Heartland offers ecommerce and virtual-terminal acceptance but quotes it only through a sales rep. Interchange-plus is available and is the structure Heartland markets hardest. Its FAQ states that for interchange-plus customers "Heartland doesn't receive any portion of interchange fees" and passes wholesale cost through without markup — but the markup over interchange, which is the only number that determines what you actually pay Heartland, is not published anywhere and is negotiable. Ask for it in basis points and get it in writing.

Expert grade B-Read review →

Kurv (formerly Electronic Merchant Systems)

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.

2.90% + $0.25 online, quoted at the same rate as keyed.

Next business day. Kurv advertises deposits into your bank account by the next business day as standard rather than as a paid upgrade.

★ 4.1 trustpilotRead review →

SpotOn

POS System

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.

Quoted at the keyed rate: 3.45% + $0.15 on POS Essentials / Preferred, 3.79% + $0.20 on All-In.

Next-morning funding, offered at no extra cost when the batch clears SpotOn's cut-off.

★ 4.5 trustpilotRead review →

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

Expert grade C+Read review →

Segpay

High-Risk Specialist

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.