Stripe
Payfac / AggregatorStripe is a leading payment processor known for its developer-friendly API, transparent pricing, and comprehensive suite of payment solutions for businesses of all sizes.
We grade payment processors on pricing transparency, features, support and contract terms — then publish the reasoning behind every grade.
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The report card
real directory dataStripe
Payfac / Aggregator
PayKings
Agent Office / Reseller
Square
POS & Business Software
The evidence
Rates, fees, payout times and contract terms come from published documentation and public filings — never from a sales call. Each review carries the date it was last fact-checked.
Where a provider doesn't disclose a number, the review says so. We don't estimate, and we don't fill gaps with marketing copy.
The fact sheet
real directory dataHelcim
Fact-checked September 7, 2026
Every value above is published by the provider. A processor that doesn't publish a number gets “Not disclosed” in that cell — never an estimate.
The grade
Pricing transparency, feature set, ease of use, customer support, contract terms and industry reputation — every review scores all six, and the grade is what the scores say it is.
No pay-to-play, no sponsored placements. A provider can't buy a better grade; they can only earn one, and the reasoning is published either way.
The scorecard
real directory dataHelcim
Mean category score 4.5/5
The six weighted scores produce the letter grade — the same rubric for every review in the directory.
Head to head
Same criteria, same evidence, side by side — with a winner called per row and overall, and the reasoning for each call.
Where the honest answer is “it depends on your business”, the comparison says that instead of forcing a verdict. And it's not just the featured matchups — any two of the reviewed processors can be compared.
Head to head
real directory data| takepayments | Dojo | |
|---|---|---|
| Published card rates | None; quoted after a consultation | Fix plan under £100k a year: £39.99 a month covers the first £3,999 of monthly turnover, then 1%; larger businesses quoted✓ |
| Monthly minimum or platform fee | Not disclosed | £39.99 a month on Fix, whether or not you take a payment; £10 a month per location on Flex |
| American Express | Accepted on its terminals; rate not published | Included on the Fix plan; optional on other plans |
| Foreign-card surcharges | Not disclosed | +0.05% EEA card present, +0.15% EEA card not present, +0.95% + 13p and +1.45% + 13p for non-EEA |
Full transparency
Lawsuits, regulatory actions, undisclosed pricing, contract traps — when the evidence turns up a problem, it goes in the review with the same prominence as the praise.
A grade you can trust has to be allowed to be bad. Every item in this feed links to the review that documents it.
Watch out
from published reviewsYappi v. Wix.com Ltd., et al. (N.D. Ill., No. 26-cv-8852) — securities class action
Wix Payments · 2026
Zip Co Ltd v Firstmac Ltd [2026] HCA 16
Zip · 2026-05-13
Authentic Brands Group v. Bolt Financial, Inc.
Bolt · 2022-07-06
Fanatics, Inc. v. Bolt Financial, Inc.
Bolt · 2024-09-12
Doesn't publish its pricing
Teya
Doesn't publish its pricing
takepayments
Documented in the linked reviews — legal actions are listed with case title, date and status.
Top rated
Ranked by grade, then by average category score. Equal grades share a position. An acquirer and an agent office are not the same purchase — pick a category to rank like against like.
Stripe is a leading payment processor known for its developer-friendly API, transparent pricing, and comprehensive suite of payment solutions for businesses of all sizes.
PayKings is a specialized payment processor offering tailored solutions for high-risk industries with a strong emphasis on fraud prevention.
Square offers simple, transparent payment processing ideal for small businesses. Flat-rate pricing, no monthly fees, and excellent software make it a top choice — but account holds and limited support are key concerns.
Helcim is a Calgary-based payment processing company that offers genuinely transparent interchange-plus pricing with no monthly fees, no hidden charges, and a comprehensive suite of free payment tools.
Adyen is a global, enterprise-grade payments platform that unifies acquiring, processing, routing and risk management into a single stack for merchants with international and omnichannel needs.
Shopify Payments is Shopify’s own branded payments service — processed by Stripe, per Shopify’s published processor list — giving merchants one-click access to accepting cards and wallets inside Shopify, simplifying setup and eliminating third-party gateway fees for supported merchants.
The directory
Teya is a London-headquartered payments and business-banking company founded in 2019 as SaltPay by Ali Mazanderani and Eduardo Pontes, renamed in April 2023, and backed by investors including Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital and Michael Spencer — total funding is reported at about $845 million by data providers and $1.1 billion by The Business of Payments. It grew by acquisition — Iceland's Borgun in 2020, the UK's RMS Group in 2022 and the Czech ePOS company Storyous among them — and now sells to small businesses in nine European markets, the UK, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain, with Spain and Italy launched commercially in February 2026. In the UK the offer is a Teya Pro or Teya Lite card machine from £14.99 a month with a lifetime warranty, Tap to Pay on iPhone and Android, online payments, and a free e-money Business Account that card takings settle into next working day as standard, every day including weekends and bank holidays as an option, or in seconds with Instant Settlements. Rates are quoted rather than published — the pricing page says there is no standard price list, the card-machine page says fees start at 1.59% — and using an outside bank account instead of Teya's adds 0.10% to every transaction. Teya Solutions Ltd is an electronic money institution authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (reference 978181), so the account is safeguarded rather than FSCS-protected. Its UK Trustpilot profile is 4.4 from about 1,500 reviews, 82% five-star and 15% one-star, and the one-star reviews are about held funds and unreturned calls.
myPOS is a London-headquartered payments company founded in 2012 by Christo Georgiev and owned since February 2024 by the private-equity firm Advent International in a deal reported at around €500 million, after which the founder exited and Mario Shiliashki, formerly of Mastercard and PayPal, became chief executive. It sells card machines outright — the myPOS Go 2 at £39, Flex at £59, Go Combo at £169 and Ultra at £179, all excluding VAT — with no monthly fee, and settles every card payment instantly into a free myPOS e-money business account with a Mastercard business card, a model it says it pioneered in 2014. The UK rate card is published for businesses under £10,000 a month: 1.10% + 7p on domestic consumer cards, 2.20% + 7p on EEA consumer cards, 2.45% + 7p on American Express and 2.85% + 7p on everything else in person, and 1.30% + 15p domestic, 2.50% + 15p Amex and 2.90% + 15p other cards online; larger businesses get a custom quote. UK, Gibraltar and Swiss services are provided by myPOS Payments Ltd, an electronic money institution authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (reference 900826), and the group says it serves more than 400,000 merchants in over 30 countries with 15 physical stores, up from the 170,000 small businesses Reuters reported when the sale was agreed. Its Trustpilot profile is 4.2 from nearly 22,000 reviews, 70% five-star and 13% one-star, and the one-star reviews are about unexplained application rejections, slow deliveries and support that is hard to reach.
CDGcommerce is a family-owned merchant services provider founded in 1998 by Chris and Laura West and based in Port Orange, Florida, operating as a registered ISO/MSP of Pinnacle Bank (dba Synovus Bank) and Citizens Bank, N.A. It is unusual among independent sales organisations for publishing its entire rate card: a flat-rate plan at 2.90% + $0.30 in person and 3.50% + $0.30 online with a $9.95 monthly fee, an interchange-plus plan at interchange + 0.30% + $0.10 retail, + 0.35% + $0.15 online and + 0.25% + $0.10 for non-profits, and a wholesale membership at $49 to $199 a month paid annually with per-transaction cents from 15¢ down to 6¢. Its own Quantum gateway and virtual terminal are free, there are no PCI, annual, statement or gateway fees, and — in the company's words — in more than twenty years it has never required a contract length or termination fee. It holds an A+ rating and BBB accreditation since 2020 with two complaints closed in three years, and it makes no attempt to serve merchants outside the United States or in adult, cannabis or telemarketing categories. The weaknesses are the ones that come with a small shop: a thin self-service knowledge base, a Dejavoo terminal that carries a $79-a-year update charge, and third-party reports of funding holds and terminations on riskier accounts.
Zeller is a Melbourne payments and business-banking company founded in 2020 by Ben Pfisterer, who had led Square's Asia-Pacific team, and Dominic Yap, and launched in May 2021. It sells an EFTPOS terminal outright — the Zeller Terminal 1x and the newer Zeller Terminal 2, both listed at A$99 on promotion in September 2026 — with no monthly rental, no lock-in contract and a flat 1.4% on every in-person card, American Express included, falling to 1.2% when payments run through its free Zeller POS software. Every merchant gets a Zeller Transaction Account and debit card at no cost, with card takings settled into it nightly and available the next business day at an outside bank. It also offers invoices, a virtual terminal, Tap to Pay on iPhone and Android, corporate expense cards and, from April 2026, a UK operation priced at 1.3% on domestic Visa and Mastercard. The company reached a valuation above A$1 billion ten months after launch on the back of a A$100 million Series B in March 2022 and says more than 100,000 Australian businesses use it. Zeller Australia Pty Ltd holds an Australian financial services licence and is a principal member of Mastercard; merchant funds are held in a segregated account at Cuscal rather than in a bank deposit. The pricing is among the simplest in the Australian market and the hardware is well regarded; the recurring complaint is the one every fintech acquirer attracts — funds frozen pending documents, with slow answers.
Wix Payments is the native payment processor inside Wix, the website builder founded in Tel Aviv in 2006 by Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan and listed on Nasdaq since 2013. It lets a Wix merchant accept cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and instalment plans from Affirm, Afterpay and Klarna without connecting a third-party processor, with payments, payouts, refunds and disputes managed from the Wix dashboard. Wix's own help centre says it is available in fifteen countries and, in its terms, that the processing underneath is handled by Adyen and Stripe in most regions and by Pagar.me in Brazil — so this is a payment facilitator layered on other acquirers rather than a new one. US pricing is published in full: 2.9% plus 30¢ on standard cards online, 3.7% plus 30¢ on American Express, 2.6% flat on the Wix POS hardware, 2.6% plus 20¢ for Tap to Pay, 3.5% plus 30¢ keyed, 6% plus 30¢ on the instalment options, a 1.5% cross-border surcharge and a $15 chargeback fee. Payouts run daily, weekly or monthly and reach a US bank in three to five business days after a two-to-five-day pending period. The case for it is one dashboard, a competitive in-person rate and a real hardware line; the case against is that online it costs exactly what Stripe charges directly, Amex is expensive, Wix's documented reserve and hold policy gives it wide latitude over your money, and support is chat and callback only.
LawPay is the payment processor built for law firms by AffiniPay, the Austin, Texas company Amy Porter founded in 2005 and which rebranded its corporate identity as 8am in August 2025; the product now trades as 8am LawPay. Launched in 2007, it is offered through all fifty state bar associations and more than sixty local and specialty bars, describes itself as the only ABA-recommended payment solution for the legal industry, and says more than 120,000 lawyers use it. Its reason for existing is trust accounting: card fees are debited from the firm's operating account rather than the client trust or IOLTA account, and chargebacks and refunds cannot be pulled from trust funds, which is what the bar rules require and what a general-purpose processor cannot promise. Pricing is published in full and interchange-free: $19 a month with no contract, 2.99% plus 30¢ on Visa, Mastercard and Discover, 3.90% plus 30¢ on American Express, 1% on eCheck, 5.95% on its Pay Later legal-fee financing, plus a $7.99 monthly card-brand pass-through fee and 1.75% on foreign cards. Since January 2024 eligible firms have had next-business-day funding on cards and eCheck, and since April 2026 8am has guaranteed it. 8am, LLC operates as an independent sales organization of Fifth Third Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, Synovus Bank and Fiserv Canada. The record is good: an A+ BBB rating with fourteen complaints in three years, and a Trustpilot profile that is 78% five-star. The costs are a card rate a tenth of a point above Stripe's, an Amex rate near four percent, and a pass-through fee that reviewers say catches firms unawares.
Squarespace Payments is the native payment processor inside Squarespace, the New York website builder founded by Anthony Casalena in 2003 and taken private by Permira in October 2024 for about $7.2bn. Announced in October 2023 and rolled out first in the United States, it now covers fifteen countries and lets a Squarespace merchant accept cards, ACH, Klarna, Afterpay and other methods without connecting Stripe or PayPal, with payments, payouts, refunds and disputes managed inside the Squarespace dashboard. Underneath, Squarespace's own help documentation describes Stripe as its processing services partner, so this is a payment facilitator layered on Stripe rather than a new acquirer. US pricing is published in full: 2.9% plus 30¢ on standard cards on the Basic and Core plans, 2.7% on Plus and 2.5% on Advanced, a 1.5% surcharge on international cards, 3.2% plus 30¢ on American Express and premium cards, ACH at 1% to 1.5%, and a $20 dispute fee. Payouts are daily and reach a US bank account in one to two business days. The case for it is convenience and, on the higher plans, a modest rate cut; the case against is that it is no cheaper than Stripe direct on the plans most merchants are on, it is locked to Squarespace, and a steady stream of complaints describes risk holds on funds with no phone number to call.
Lemon Squeezy is a merchant-of-record platform for selling software, digital downloads, subscriptions and licence keys, launched publicly in 2021 by a small team of founders led by JR Farr and acquired by Stripe in July 2024. As merchant of record it is the legal seller of record on every transaction: it collects and remits sales tax and VAT worldwide, absorbs fraud and chargeback liability, and pays the merchant a net amount twice a month. The price is one number — 5% plus 50 cents per transaction, with no monthly fee — plus surcharges of 1.5% on international and PayPal transactions and 0.5% on subscription payments, and the tooling around it (checkout overlays, licence keys, signed download links, affiliates, email marketing) is unusually complete for the price. The catch is what has happened since the acquisition. Stripe has built its own merchant-of-record product, Stripe Managed Payments, priced at 3.5% on top of standard Stripe fees, and in January 2026 Lemon Squeezy's chief executive wrote that the team had been heads-down on it, that Lemon Squeezy users had seen slower support and fewer updates as a result, and that the goal was to give them an easy way to migrate. Independent sentiment has collapsed accordingly: 1.2 on Trustpilot from 173 reviews, 88% of them one-star, mostly about onboarding rejections and unanswered support requests. The product still works and still signs up new merchants, but a buyer today is choosing a platform whose own maker is steering customers to its successor.
Dojo is the trading name of Paymentsense Limited, a London company incorporated in 2008 that grew into one of the UK's largest card-terminal resellers before rebuilding itself, from 2020, as a cloud-native acquirer under the Dojo brand. It now holds its own acquiring licence rather than reselling Fiserv's, and by its own filings handled £46.2bn of card volume for roughly 146,000 merchant locations in the year to March 2025 — a share it puts at 12.5% of UK small-business card-present acquiring. The pitch is simple: a fast card machine, money in your account the next day including weekends and bank holidays, integration with more than 450 EPOS systems, and a UK phone line. For businesses turning over less than £100,000 a year on cards there is a published Fix plan at £39.99 a month covering the first £3,999 of monthly card turnover, with 1% above that. Everyone larger gets a quote. Independent satisfaction is strong — 4.2 on Trustpilot from 5,612 reviews, 88% of them five-star — and the company is FCA-authorised. Against that sit a 12-month minimum term with the remaining terminal fees payable if you leave early, custom pricing that cannot be benchmarked, a fee schedule with £28 chargebacks and a £15-a-month PCI non-compliance charge, and a balance sheet carrying £649m of net debt at a 14% effective interest rate.
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Expert insights and industry analysis.

A retainer paid by card must reach the trust account in full, the fee must come out of the firm's own money, and no chargeback may touch another client's funds. Most general-purpose processors cannot promise any of that. What the ABA and state bars say, and what the processors that comply charge, as of September 2026.

Capital One finished moving its debit cards from Mastercard to the Discover network this year. The federal interchange cap does not reach a three-party network, so a card that cost a merchant about 24 cents on a $50 sale now costs about 71. Who pays, who does not, and what the other big banks are doing about it.

Square, PayPal, Stripe, Shopify and Toast all lend against your card sales on the same terms: one fixed fee, no interest, repaid as a slice of every day's takings. The fee is fixed. The time is not, and that is where the cost hides. Worked through with the providers' own examples, as of September 2026.
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