Every processor.
Graded on evidence.

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.

Not published. Funding runs on Fiserv's acquiring rails and is set in the individual merchant agreement, typically next business day for accounts set up that way. Confirm the funding timetable and the cut-off time in writing, because it is an agent-level variable rather than a platform-level guarantee.

★ 1.8 trustpilotRead review →

Amazon Pay

Amazon's express checkout button for other people's websites. Amazon's merchant payments business dates to the Amazon Flexible Payments Service beta in August 2007; the product merchants use today launched as Login and Pay with Amazon on 8 October 2013 and took the Amazon Pay name later. A shopper clicks it, signs in with the Amazon account they already have, and pays with a card and address Amazon already holds. Pricing is published and ordinary — 2.9% plus a $0.30 authorization fee on US domestic transactions, 3.9% plus $0.30 when the card was issued abroad, no monthly fee and no setup fee — and Express Payout will fund a US bank account within 24 hours including weekends, for free. What Amazon Pay is not is a merchant account. It is online-only, it has no card-present product, its acceptable use policy bans a long list of categories outright including CBD regardless of state law, and it only ever captures the slice of your checkout that Amazon shoppers choose. Treat it as a second button next to your real processor, not as a replacement for one.

Published, which by the standards of this industry is worth saying first. A US domestic web or mobile transaction costs 2.9% of the amount plus a $0.30 authorization fee, plus tax where applicable — Amazon's own worked example is a $10.00 sale costing $0.59. If the customer's card was issued outside the United States, the 2.9% is replaced by a 3.9% cross-border processing fee and the $0.30 authorization fee still applies, making the same $10.00 sale cost $0.69. The percentage fees are refunded when you refund a sale; the $0.30 authorization fee is not. Amazon Pay publishes no volume tiers, though it does invite larger merchants to talk to sales, so a negotiated rate exists even if the threshold is not stated.

The default is ACH to your bank account on a three- to five-day timeline. Express Payout replaces that with funding within 24 hours including weekends and bank holidays, at no additional cost, and it is not an upsell — once you enrol through Seller Central, all eligible payouts go through it automatically unless you opt out.

Expert grade BRead review →

Worldline

Europe's largest listed payments company and, since March 2026, one that no longer sells to North American merchants at all — it sold its North American subsidiaries, including Bambora North America, to Shift4. What remains is a Paris-headquartered acquirer and processor serving roughly 1.2 million merchants and financial institutions across Europe with about 13,400 staff. The last two years have been brutal: a June 2025 investigative report accused it of knowingly processing for prohibited and high-risk clients, Belgian prosecutors opened a money-laundering probe into its local unit, the shares fell more than 40%, and S&P cut the credit rating to junk in August 2025. The underlying acquiring business is real and licensed; the governance record and the balance sheet are why this is not a B.

Worldline publishes no general rate card. Pricing is quoted per merchant and varies widely by country, because the group is a federation of acquirers assembled through acquisitions — Equens, SIX Payment Services and Ingenico among them — each with its own legacy contracts and local schedules. Some country sites publish SMB packages; the group site does not. Assume a negotiated blended or interchange-plus rate and ask which Worldline legal entity you are actually contracting with.

Not published at group level; settlement terms are set in the country-level acquiring agreement. Worldline is a licensed acquirer across the EEA, so funding runs on standard European settlement cycles, but the specific timetable, any reserve and any delayed-settlement provision are contract terms you need to read rather than assumptions you can make.

Expert grade B-Read review →

TailoredPay

High-Risk Specialist

A small Miami high-risk merchant account broker founded in 2019, whose whole proposition is placing US businesses that ordinary acquirers decline — adult, CBD, vape, lending, dating, telemedicine, travel, dropshipping and, more recently, prop trading firms. It publishes a real address, a named list of over a hundred verticals, gateway integrations with Authorize.net and NMI, and — unusually for this corner of the market — some indicative pricing on its own blog. What it does not have is much of a public record: 42 Trustpilot reviews, every single one of them five stars, no BBB profile we could find, and no named acquiring banks. The absence of complaints is not the same as evidence of good outcomes, and a spotless rating on a small sample deserves scepticism rather than credit.

No published rate card, and pricing is set by underwriting. TailoredPay's own blog states its processing rates start at 2.6%, with a gateway fee of roughly $10–$25 a month plus $0.05–$0.10 per transaction. That is self-published rather than independently verified, and 2.6% is a floor for the least risky end of its book — a genuinely high-risk merchant with chargeback history should expect a good deal more, in line with the 3%–5% range that is normal for restricted verticals. It also advertises a rate-match commitment: it will beat any rate offered by a qualified competitor. Get a competing quote and use it.

TailoredPay advertises daily payouts, and Trustpilot reviewers describe next-day settlement. Neither is a published, contractual commitment, and in high-risk processing the funding schedule is set by the acquiring bank and can be changed by risk decisions. Treat 'daily payouts' as the intended arrangement and get your actual settlement timetable, plus any reserve deduction, written into the agreement.

★ 4.8 trustpilotRead review →

Newtek Payments (NewtekOne)

The payments arm of NewtekOne, a Nasdaq-listed financial holding company that became a bank in January 2023 by acquiring National Bank of New York City and renaming it Newtek Bank, N.A. That makes it unusual among mid-market processors: the same company can hold your deposits, write your SBA loan, run your payroll, sell you insurance and process your cards. The payments business is real but not growing — $22.3 million of processing revenue in the first half of 2026, down from $24.0 million a year earlier — and it publishes no rates at all. The recurring merchant complaint is undisclosed fees and difficulty cancelling, and there is an old but serious regulatory matter on the record: a 2015 FTC settlement under which the Newtek processing entity paid $1.7 million over payments it handled for a robocall scheme.

Newtek publishes no rates on its own website — the payments pages describe products and route you to a specialist. Third-party reviewers report two named plans: NewtPay at 2.85% + $0.28 with no setup or monthly fee, and NewtPay PRO at 2.19% + $0.26 with a $15 monthly fee. Those figures come from a review site rather than from Newtek, and plan names and pricing at this kind of provider change without announcement, so treat them as a starting point for a conversation rather than a quote. Newtek also markets 'Zero Cost Processing' — a surcharge or cash-discount programme that moves the card cost to the customer — without publishing its terms.

Not published. Funding timing depends on the sponsor bank behind the account rather than on Newtek, and Newtek does not state a standard timetable on its public pages. Get the batch cut-off and the deposit timetable in writing, and ask specifically whether holding your operating account at Newtek Bank changes the funding schedule — bundling is the group's main selling point, so it is a fair question to ask what it actually buys you.

★ 4.9 trustpilotRead review →

Leaders Merchant Services

ISO

C+

A California merchant services reseller that is no longer an independent company: its own website footer reads 'Paysafe Payment Processing Solutions, LLC dba Leaders Merchant Services', the end point of a chain that ran from iPayment's 2017 acquisition to Paysafe's purchase of iPayment in June 2018. It sells through independent agents, quotes rates only after a sales call, and — according to consistent third-party reporting — puts merchants on three-year contracts that auto-renew and carry an early termination fee in the $250–$350 range. It holds an A+ from the BBB and is accredited there, but the customer-facing record is the opposite: 1.3 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 49 reviews, two-thirds of them one star, with the same three complaints repeating — quoted rates that did not match the contract, fees that appeared without warning, and accounts that kept billing after the merchant believed they had cancelled.

Leaders publishes no rate card. Its own FAQ claims rates 'starting at 0.15%', which is a floor quoted without context — 0.15% is a markup figure, not an all-in rate, and no merchant pays 0.15% to accept a card. Third-party reviewers who have seen Leaders contracts report an interchange-plus markup in the region of 0.20%–0.50% plus $0.10–$0.20 per transaction for negotiated accounts, and a virtual terminal rate reported at 2.90% + $0.30. Those figures come from review sites rather than from Leaders, and because the company sells through independent agents, what you are offered depends heavily on which agent you speak to.