Every processor.
Graded on evidence.

A vertical payments company you probably meet through your software, not through a salesperson. REPAY — legally M & A Ventures, LLC doing business as REPAY, and known in full as Realtime Electronic Payments — was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Atlanta. It is publicly traded as RPAY and reported full-year 2025 revenue of $309.3 million, split between a Consumer Payments segment at $285.9 million and a Business Payments segment at $48.4 million, with 2026 guidance of $340 to $346 million. Its business is embedding payment acceptance and vendor disbursement inside the software that particular industries already run: consumer lenders, auto dealers and their finance arms, credit unions, receivables management firms, municipalities, healthcare, HOA and property management. The distinctive products are the ones a general processor does not build — Instant Funding, which pushes loan proceeds to a borrower's debit card in real time through Visa Direct, and an AP automation network REPAY says exceeded 602,000 suppliers at the end of 2025. What it does not do is publish a price or serve a walk-up merchant.

Not published. REPAY quotes per client and every pricing route on its site ends at a sales contact or a phone number. This is consistent with how it sells — deals are typically scoped alongside a software partner for a specific vertical — but it means there is no public benchmark to check a quote against. Reviewers on business software directories describe the cost disclosure once you are a customer as good, with one calling REPAY very transparent on costs and virtual card rebates; the opacity is at the shopping stage, not afterwards.

Not published for merchant settlement. REPAY's public funding story is about money going out to consumers rather than in to merchants, so a prospective client should ask separately what the settlement timetable is on their own acceptance volume.

Expert grade BRead review →

NCR Voyix

POS System

The retail and restaurant half of the old NCR. NCR Corporation — founded in 1884 as the National Cash Register Company — renamed itself NCR Voyix in October 2023 when it spun off its ATM business as NCR Atleos, and what remains is a unified commerce platform: Aloha and Counterpoint point of sale, self-checkout, and Voyix Pay processing sold alongside them. The scale is real. NCR Voyix reported 80,000 platform sites and more than 8,500 payment sites at the end of 2025, $1.7 billion of annual recurring revenue, and full-year Software and Services revenue of $1,986 million. The problem is the paper you sign. The published US merchant agreement sets a 36-month initial term that auto-renews for 12-month periods unless you give 60 days' notice, makes cancellation during the term immediately payable for every remaining month, and reserves an annual price increase of CPI plus 5% — with a contractual floor of 5% — that applies during the initial term as well as after it. Buy the platform if the platform is what you need, and negotiate the term before you sign anything.

Not published. Voyix Pay is described as offering multiple funding options, but NCR Voyix states no standard settlement window, no next-day cut-off and no fee for faster funding on any public page. Get the funding timetable in writing during the quote, because you cannot look it up afterwards. The merchant agreement also gives NCR Voyix broad rights to suspend or terminate service immediately and without notice, including if you fail to meet any underwriting standards it maintains — and after a payment default you may request reactivation once the default is settled, but the agreement expressly reserves the right to refuse.

★ 4.4 trustpilotRead review →

Leap Payments

ISO

A sales organisation with an unusually good promise and an unusually poor paper trail. Leap Payments sells interchange-plus pricing to every customer and attaches a Lifetime Rate Lock: its own processing, authorization and monthly account fees will not rise for the life of the account, with interchange itself passing through at cost in both directions. That is a better structure than most small merchants are offered, and the company has real standing behind it — it was named the number one MSP/ISO in Elavon's Western Region for merchant activations at Elavon's 2019 conference. The trouble is that you cannot verify anything else. No rate, no markup, no monthly fee and no contract term is published. Sources disagree on whether the agreement is month-to-month with no early termination fee or a three-year term with a $295 exit fee. Its own site says it is a sales office for WorldPay, an FIS Global company — a description stale on two counts by 2026 — while independent reviewers describe it as a registered ISO and MSP of Elavon. And the Better Business Bureau, which the company's marketing history leans on, currently shows no rating at all.

The same interchange-plus structure covers e-commerce, virtual terminal and online invoicing. No published markup.

Leap Payments advertises same-day funding on deposits. It does not publish the cut-off time, the eligibility rules or which merchants qualify, and same-day funding in this market is usually conditional on batch time, account age and risk profile.

Expert grade B-Read review →

CSG Forte

A biller-focused processor that does ACH properly. Forte Payment Systems was founded in Texas in 1998 and acquired by CSG Systems International on 1 October 2018, becoming CSG Forte; CSG itself was taken private by NEC's Netcracker subsidiary on 14 May 2026, so the parent above this business changed hands very recently. The company says it handles 260 million transactions and more than $195 billion a year for roughly 175,000 merchants, and it sells almost entirely into recurring-billing verticals — utilities, government, insurance, healthcare, property management, telecoms. Two things set it apart. It is a registered acquirer as well as a gateway, operating as an Elavon Payments MSP and a Registered MSP/ISO of Elavon, Inc., Georgia, and it publishes unusually honest documentation of how ACH actually settles, including the awkward fact that standard funding can take up to six business days. Against that, no rates are published, the standard agreement runs three years, and the BBB file shows unanswered complaints and merchants struggling to stop billing after cancellation.

Not published. CSG Forte quotes per merchant based on volume and industry, and its own site carries no rate card. Third-party directories consistently report figures in the region of 2.90% plus $0.31 for card transactions, roughly 3.15% plus $0.31 for American Express, and about $0.25 per ACH transaction with a $2.50 monthly gateway fee — but those numbers come from reseller and directory listings rather than from CSG Forte, and we could not corroborate any of them against a company document. Treat them as a rough expectation to test a quote against, not as the price.

Slower than most merchants expect, and CSG Forte documents it honestly. Standard ACH settlement can take up to six business days: file submission on day 0, the consumer account debited on days 0 to 1, a risk and fraud review across days 1 to 4 during which a funding hold may apply, funds released to the merchant on day 5 and final settlement on day 6. Split-fund merchants and merchants processing Canadian dollars add another day. Card transactions are described as funding within one to two business days after settlement, and CSG Forte notes it does not control the acquirer's settlement time.

Expert grade BRead review →

Bankful

Payment Gateway

A high-risk-friendly gateway that does the one thing almost nobody in high risk does: it publishes its prices. Bankful sells gateway plans off a public page — $0 a month with a $50 monthly minimum and $0.15 a transaction at the bottom, $495 a month and $0.08 a transaction at the top — and lists the add-on costs alongside them, down to $38 per Ethoca alert and $1.60 per eCheck authentication. It is an officially supported third-party gateway for WooCommerce and works with BigCommerce, Wix, Ecwid and Shopify, and it accepts categories those platforms' own processors decline: CBD, nutraceuticals, firearms, tobacco, adult, dating, bail bonds and tech support. The reservations are substantial and you should weigh them properly. The card processing rate — the number that actually determines your cost — is not published, only the gateway fee on top of it. The independent record is polarised: an A+ Better Business Bureau file, accredited since 2020, against a 2.1 Trustpilot score where 91% of eleven reviews are one star. And Bankful shares a suite address and a co-founder with eMerchantBroker, so treat the two as one commercial relationship rather than two quotes.

Here is the distinction that matters most with Bankful, and it is easy to miss. What the pricing page publishes is the gateway cost — a monthly plan fee, a monthly minimum and a per-transaction fee — not the discount rate. Bankful's own explanation is that it charges transaction-based fees and applicable card network pass-through fees based on industry risk and processing profile, with the credit card processing rates themselves referred out to the merchant services agreement. So the published $0.08 to $0.15 per transaction is what you pay on top of a percentage rate that is quoted privately and, for a high-risk category, is likely to be the dominant line on your statement. Ask for the effective rate — total fees divided by volume — for a merchant in your specific category, and get it in writing before you sign.

Bankful does not publish settlement timing, reserve percentages or reserve hold periods anywhere, and for a high-risk merchant those are the terms that decide whether a business survives its first bad month. Its own guidance to readers is that a reputable high-risk gateway should disclose rolling reserve percentages and release timelines up front — advice worth holding Bankful to during your own negotiation. Ask for the reserve percentage, the hold period, the release schedule and the settlement timetable in writing, and treat their absence from a proposal as a reason to keep shopping.

★ 2.1 trustpilotRead review →

Epos Now

POS System

A cloud point-of-sale system founded in Norwich, England in 2011 by Jacyn Heavens, now operating in the US from an Orlando office and claiming more than 80,000 business locations across 70-plus countries. The software is well liked — 26,281 Trustpilot reviews average 4.3, and the day-to-day complaints are few. The problems are all at the edges of the relationship: nothing about software pricing is published on the US site, the hardware bundle is advertised behind a discount countdown that never actually runs out, no two independent reviewers describe the same contract length, and the recurring theme in the US complaint record is how hard it is to get out. BBB lists 114 complaints in three years against an A+ accredited profile. Good product, aggressive commercial packaging — get the term and the monthly cost in writing before you sign anything.

Not published. Epos Now also supports third-party processors — Merchant Maverick lists International Bancard, Worldpay and EVO Payments among the options — so if you already have an acquirer you like, ask whether you can keep it and what it costs you in software terms to do so.

Epos Now publishes this, and it is one of the few concrete numbers on the site: transactions are collected at the end of the day and paid out the next day, excluding weekends and bank holidays. A premium faster-payout option is available on request that includes weekends and bank holidays and lets you set your own cut-off time. The price of that option is not published.

★ 4.3 trustpilotRead review →

emerchantpay

A London-headquartered payment service provider and acquirer, founded in 2002 by its current chief executive Jonas Reynisson, that is unusual in this market for owning both halves of the stack. emerchantpay holds its own FCA authorisation as an electronic money institution (Reg. No. 900778), has been a principal member of Visa Europe and Mastercard since 2012, launched its own gateway in 2013 and its own acquiring division in 2014, and runs card-present alongside online and mobile. It underwrites verticals most acquirers decline — gaming, forex, travel, subscriptions — which makes it a genuine option for merchants who have been turned down elsewhere, without being a broker reselling somebody else's appetite for risk. The catch is the usual one: no published pricing, quotes come from sales after underwriting, and high-risk accounts should expect a rolling reserve. Its US arm is in Boca Raton, but its licensing and scheme membership are European, so establish which entity is boarding you.

emerchantpay publishes no rate card. Pricing is quoted per merchant after underwriting, and the company offers both interchange-plus-plus and blended structures — which one you are offered depends on your volume, your vertical and how your risk profile reads. Because it is a principal scheme member with its own acquiring licence rather than a reseller, there is at least one fewer margin in the chain than with an ISO, but that only translates into a better price if you negotiate for it. Third-party reviewers covering the iGaming sector report all-in card rates in the region of 1.8% to 3.5% for gaming merchants, plus an FX markup of one to two per cent; that is a single source in a niche publication, it is not confirmed by emerchantpay, and it should be treated as an indication of the range rather than a quote. Ask for IC++ if you have any scale — with a licensed acquirer it is a reasonable thing to ask for.

Not published, and settlement timing in high-risk acquiring is negotiated rather than standard. Establish the settlement frequency, the delay from capture to funding, and the settlement currency, and get all three in the agreement. emerchantpay supports more than 20 settlement currencies against more than 150 processing currencies, so a mismatch between the currency you sell in and the currency you settle in is an FX cost you should price deliberately rather than discover.

★ 4 trustpilotRead review →

Dwolla

An API for moving money between US bank accounts, founded in Des Moines in 2008 and one of the earliest companies to make ACH programmable. Dwolla does not touch cards at all: it does standard ACH, Same Day ACH, and instant payments over the RTP network and FedNow, behind a single integration. That is a genuinely useful thing to be able to buy, and Dwolla has been doing it longer than almost anyone. Two things should temper the enthusiasm. It no longer publishes any pricing — the pricing page now says only that terms are tailored to volume, rails and integration — and in May 2026 Dwolla was acquired by NMI, which is folding its capabilities into NMI's embedded payments platform. NMI says it will keep supporting existing Dwolla customers; neither company has said whether the Dwolla brand and product survive the integration. Build on it if bank-to-bank money movement is your requirement, but ask about the roadmap in writing.

Dwolla no longer publishes any pricing. Its pricing page now says only that pricing is "tailored to your transaction volume, rails, and integration needs — not a one-size-fits-all tier" and directs you to sales. There are no plan names, no per-transaction rates for ACH, Same Day ACH, RTP or FedNow, no platform fee and no published minimum. Third-party software directories still carry figures from Dwolla's earlier published model — most commonly 0.5% per transfer with a floor of about 5 cents and a cap of about $5, and bundled plans said to start around $250 a month. Those numbers reflect a rate card Dwolla has taken down, they are not corroborated by the company, and they should not be used to budget. The only reliable figure is the one in your own quote.

Dwolla's whole product is the timing question, so it is worth stating precisely. Standard ACH settles on the ordinary one-to-three-business-day ACH timetable. Same Day ACH clears within the same business day if it makes the window. Instant payments over the RTP network and the FedNow Service clear in seconds, around the clock including weekends and holidays — but only when both the sending and receiving financial institutions participate in the relevant network, which is a real constraint and not one Dwolla can fix for you.

Expert grade B-Read review →

CardConnect

ISO

C+

A Fiserv-owned merchant services brand built around the CardPointe platform, sold almost entirely through independent sales agents and ISOs. The technology is capable — CardPointe covers in-store, online, mobile and virtual terminal, CardSecure handles tokenisation and point-to-point encryption, and Clover hardware comes with it. The commercial record is the problem. CardConnect paid $7.65 million in 2021 to settle a class action covering 110,875 merchants who said it charged fees their agreements never named, and in July 2024 a Pennsylvania medical practice filed a fresh proposed class action alleging the same conduct had resumed, citing a $199.99 annual compliance fee, a $215 security bundle fee and a $200 annual membership fee introduced in February 2024. Nothing about pricing is published, terms vary by whichever agent sells to you, and the recurring complaint on every public channel is how hard it is to leave.

CardConnect publishes no rates anywhere. There is no rate card, no entry-level plan and no self-serve signup — every quote comes from a sales agent or ISO, and interchange-plus is available through some channels but is not guaranteed to be what you are offered. Because the same brand is sold by many independent agents, two merchants of similar size can be on materially different pricing for the same product, and neither can check the other's number against a published benchmark. The one hard data point in the public record is directional rather than absolute: the fee-audit firm Merchant Cost Consulting documents a September 2023 increase of 0.10% on discount rates across all card types plus $0.05 on authorization fees, and a further April 2024 increase of 0.10% + $0.05 per transaction on Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Amex full acquiring and PIN debit. It also notes those increases were not applied uniformly to every merchant. Get your rate in writing and check your statement against it every quarter.