Payment Review
HomeReviewsCategoriesGet MatchedComparisonsBlogContact
Provider login
Payment Review

Your trusted source for payment industry insights, analysis, and expertise. Stay informed about the latest developments in payments technology and regulations.

Quick Links

  • Reviews
  • Comparisons
  • Blog
  • Request a Review
  • API Documentation
  • Provider Login

Contact

  • Contact Us
  • info@paymentreview.com

Follow Us

© 2026 Payment Review. All rights reserved.

Terms of ServicePrivacy Policy
157 processors · independently graded

Every processor.
Graded on evidence.

We grade payment processors on pricing transparency, features, support and contract terms — then publish the reasoning behind every grade.

Browse all reviews →Get matched — free
reviewed
157

reviewed

independent
100%

independent

always
Free

always

The report card

real directory data
  1. 01

    Stripe

    Payfac / Aggregator

    2.9% + $0.30A
    First payout 7-14 days; then a rolling schedule of about 2 business daysNo monthly fees
  2. 02

    PayKings

    Agent Office / Reseller

    IC + 1.10% + 25c, or IC + 0.80% + 10c above $100K/mo.A
    Payout T+2, or next-day above $100K/mo.$13 (waived on Growth). monthly
  3. 03

    Square

    POS & Business Software

    3.3% + $0.30 for Square Online and invoices on the free plan; 2.9% + $0.30 through the Payments API, or on Plus and PremiumA
    Payout Next business day
Ranked by grade, then mean category score.Full leaderboard →

In the directory

  • TD Merchant SolutionsTD Merchant Solutions
  • PolarPolar
  • PaystonePaystone
  • ProMerchantProMerchant
  • GumroadGumroad
  • Barclaycard PaymentsBarclaycard Payments
  • TyroTyro
  • FlywireFlywire
  • TeyaTeya
  • myPOSmyPOS
  • CDGcommerceCDGcommerce
  • ZellerZeller

The evidence

Every number is published — or marked absent.

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.

Read the Helcim review →

The fact sheet

real directory data
A-

Helcim

Fact-checked September 7, 2026

Online rate
Interchange + 0.5% + $0.25 per transaction
Monthly
$0
Payout
Next business morning (eligible banks), else 1–2 days
Contract
No long-term contracts

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

Six criteria, scored in the open.

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.

See every grade →

The scorecard

real directory data
A-

Helcim

Mean category score 4.5/5

Pricing transparency
5.0
Feature set
4.0
Ease of use
4.0
Customer support
4.0
Contract terms
5.0
Industry reputation
5.0

The six weighted scores produce the letter grade — the same rubric for every review in the directory.

Head to head

Put any two 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.

Compare any two processors →

Head to head

real directory data
Wave vs QuickBooks Payments
Wave (Wave Financial)QuickBooks Payments (Intuit)
Invoice paid by Visa, Mastercard or Discover2.9% + $0.602.99%
Invoice paid by American Express3.4% + $0.602.99%✓
ACH bank payment on an invoice1%, $1 minimum1%
In-person card paymentNot offered2.5%, no per-transaction cents✓
Full comparison →
  • Helcim vs Moneris for Canadian businesses →

Full transparency

We publish the problems too.

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.

Read the reviews →

Watch out

from published reviews
  • Merchant class action over the January 2021 terminal outage (Federal Court of Australia)

    Tyro · 2021-10-20

    Settled
  • Hickman v. Flywire Corporation (securities class action, E.D.N.Y.)

    Flywire · 2025-07-25

    Pending
  • Yappi v. Wix.com Ltd., et al. (N.D. Ill., No. 26-cv-8852) — securities class action

    Wix Payments · 2026

    Ongoing
  • Zip Co Ltd v Firstmac Ltd [2026] HCA 16

    Zip · 2026-05-13

    Decided
  • Doesn't publish its pricing

    ProMerchant

    Not disclosed
  • Doesn't publish its pricing

    Barclaycard Payments

    Not disclosed

Documented in the linked reviews — legal actions are listed with case title, date and status.

Top rated

Highest-graded processors

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.

Payment Platforms 33Payment Facilitators 29ISOs 36Agent Offices 14Payment Gateways 12POS Systems 12Buy Now, Pay Later Providers 7Merchants of Record 8Bank Payment Providers 6
  1. 1

    Stripe

    Payfac / Aggregator
    A

    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.

    Online rate
    2.9% + $0.30
    Payout
    First payout 7-14 days; then a rolling schedule of about 2 business days
    Expert grade ARead review →
  2. 1

    PayKings

    Agent Office / ResellerClaimed
    A

    PayKings is a specialized payment processor offering tailored solutions for high-risk industries with a strong emphasis on fraud prevention.

    Online rate
    IC + 1.10% + 25c, or IC + 0.80% + 10c above $100K/mo.
    Payout
    T+2, or next-day above $100K/mo.
    ★ 4.7 trustpilotRead review →
  3. 1

    Square

    POS & Business Software
    A

    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.

    Payout
    Next business day
    ★ 1.05 bbbRead review →
  4. 4

    Helcim

    Payfac / Aggregator
    A-

    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.

    Online rate
    Interchange + 0.5% + $0.25 per transaction
    Payout
    Next business morning (eligible banks), else 1–2 days
    ★ 2.77 bbbRead review →
  5. 4

    Adyen

    Platform / Acquirer
    A-

    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.

    Online rate
    $0.13 + Interchange+ + 0.60% (Visa/Mastercard/Maestro)
    Payout
    1-2 business days (varies by currency, bank, payout model, and cut-off times)
    ★ 1.3 trustpilotRead review →
  6. 4

    Shopify Payments

    Payfac / Aggregator
    A-

    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.

    Payout
    3 business days after the charge (US), plus 1–3 days for your bank to post it
    ★ 1.01 bbbRead review →
See every category ranked →

The directory

Browse every review

All 157A-grade 11B-grade 120C-grade 26

TD Merchant Solutions

Platform / Acquirer
B-

TD Merchant Solutions is the merchant-services arm of TD Bank, N.A., the Cherry Hill, New Jersey bank that operates as 'America's Most Convenient Bank' from Maine to Florida and is owned by Toronto-Dominion Bank. Like most US bank merchant programs it is built on Fiserv: the hardware is Clover, the gateway third-party reviewers identify is Fiserv's Payeezy, and the Clover trademark disclosure on TD's own page names First Data. Like its bank peers it publishes flat rates, and its in-person rate is the lowest headline figure among the big-bank programs we cover. As of September 2026 the small-business page quotes 2.5% + $0.15 for swiped, tapped and chip transactions and 3.5% + $0.15 for keyed, phone and e-commerce payments, with customised pricing available through its Payment Advisors, and it promises funds in a TD settlement account by 6 AM ET the next business day. The catch is the contract. The current offer — a free Clover Go, terminal or Clover station worth $179 to $1,025 — requires a three-year Merchant Solutions processing agreement and an active TD business checking account, and TD's own footnote says an account terminated before the end of that term will be charged the value of the device, solution or credit it received. Third-party reviewers additionally report a $495 early-termination fee and $19.95-a-month PCI and gateway charges that TD does not publish. The bank behind it is also mid-remediation: TD Bank, N.A. pleaded guilty in October 2024 to Bank Secrecy Act and money-laundering conspiracy charges, paid about $3.09 billion in penalties and accepted a cap on its US assets. That does not touch card processing, but it is the counterparty on the merchant agreement.

Online rate
3.5% + $0.15 per e-commerce transaction, on the same non-swipe rate as keyed payments
Expert grade B-Read review →

Polar

Merchant of Record
B-

Polar (polar.sh) is an open-source merchant of record and billing platform for developers selling software, SaaS subscriptions and digital products. It is run by Polar Software, Inc., a Delaware corporation whose team is based in Stockholm, and was founded in 2022 by Birk Jernström, who co-founded the e-commerce platform Tictail, sold it to Shopify in 2018 and then led product for Shopify's Shop app. Polar launched version 1.0 of its billing platform in September 2024 and raised a $10 million seed round led by Accel in June 2025, with angels from Shopify, Vercel, Supabase, Raycast, Resend and Framer. As merchant of record it is the legal seller of everything sold through it — it collects and remits US sales tax, EU VAT, Canadian GST and other taxes, carries chargeback liability and issues the invoices — and it charges a single platform fee on top of that. That fee changed on 27 May 2026. Organisations created before that date keep an 'Early Member' rate of 4% + 40¢ plus 0.5% on subscriptions indefinitely; new organisations pay 5% + 50¢ on the free Starter plan or buy down the rate with Pro ($20 a month, 3.8% + 40¢), Growth ($100, 3.6% + 35¢) or Scale ($400, 3.4% + 30¢). International (non-US) cards add 1.5%, disputes cost $15 each regardless of outcome, payouts go through Stripe Connect at Stripe's pass-through fees ($2 per active payout month, 0.25% + 25¢ per payout), and organisations created on or after 12 May 2026 have a seven-day settlement delay before they can withdraw. Its code is Apache 2.0 on GitHub, its SDKs and framework adapters are widely praised, and its weak points are the ones you would expect of a seed-stage company two years into operating: thin support, fixed dunning you cannot customise, and pricing for newcomers that is now level with Paddle and Lemon Squeezy rather than below them.

Pricing clarity
4.5
Feature set
4.0
Ease of use
4.0
Expert grade B-Read review →

Paystone

ISO
B

Paystone is a London, Ontario payment processor that calls itself Canada's largest bank-independent payment processor. It was founded in 2009 as Zomaron by Tarique Al-Ansari, who remains chief executive, rebranded to Paystone in November 2019 when it bought the Montreal gift-card and loyalty company DataCandy, and has since grown by acquisition — NiceJob in 2021, Canadian Payment Services in 2022 and the TSXV-listed loyalty firm Ackroo, for about C$21 million, in 2025 — on the back of roughly C$99 million raised in 2021, including C$30 million (about US$23.8 million) from Crédit Mutuel Equity. Its website says it serves more than 38,000 business locations and processes over $10 billion a year. The offer is interchange-plus with published starting points: in-person credit from 1.26% + 5¢ and debit from 5¢ a transaction on a $5-a-month merchant account, online credit from 2.27% + 25¢ on a $15-a-month gateway, a $99 setup fee, no locked-in contract, no cancellation fee and next-business-day deposits. Terminals range from the Ingenico Desk/5000 and Move/5000 to Clover Flex, Mini and Station Duo, and the processing is sold alongside its own DataCandy gift and loyalty programs and NiceJob review software. It is a registered MSP/ISO of U.S. Bank's Canadian branch and Elavon and of Wells Fargo Bank's US and Canadian branches, and a partner of Global Payments Direct and First Data Canada. The complaint record is small — third-party review sites count a handful of BBB complaints, mostly about terminal-rental billing and cancellation timing — and the company's BBB profile is currently under review. 'As low as' pricing means the real rate is a quote.

Payout
Next business day
Expert grade BRead review →

ProMerchant

Agent Office / Reseller
B-

ProMerchant is a small merchant-services company in Woburn, Massachusetts, started in May 2018, that sells card acceptance to US restaurants, retailers, mobile traders, phone-order and e-commerce businesses, and places harder-to-approve merchants — CBD, vape, supplements, firearms, credit repair, telemarketing and dozens of others on its published list — with what it says are twelve different high-risk processors. Its pitch is the terms rather than the rate: month-to-month agreements with no early-termination fee, no setup or application fee, a free terminal placement programme, and a choice between interchange-plus pricing with a fixed markup and a zero-cost surcharge plan for retail and restaurant merchants. It publishes no numbers; third-party reviewers report quotes starting around interchange plus 0.50% and $0.15 per transaction and $0.30 per virtual-terminal transaction. Funding is next day for batches settled by 8:30pm Eastern and otherwise two business days. It holds an A+ from the Better Business Bureau, accredited since November 2018 with seven complaints in three years, and a 4.3 on Trustpilot from 258 reviews — though only a couple of those are from the last year, and a run of mid-2024 reviews describe months of unanswered calls that ProMerchant attributed to a restructuring at a parent company unrelated to payments. With about 15 staff and no disclosed sponsor bank or processor, it is an agent office: your contract, reserve and funding terms come from whichever processor it places you with.

Payout
Next business day for batches settled by 8:30pm Eastern; otherwise 2 business days
Expert grade B-Read review →

Gumroad

Merchant of Record
C+

Gumroad is a storefront and checkout for people selling digital products — e-books, courses, software, memberships, design assets — founded in San Francisco in 2011 by Sahil Lavingia and, since 1 January 2025, the merchant of record on every sale, which means it charges, collects and remits sales tax, VAT and GST worldwide and handles disputes with buyers. It says creators have earned more than $1 billion through it, and in April 2025 it published its entire codebase under an MIT licence. Lavingia stepped down as chief executive in November 2025 after 14 years, handing over to long-time engineer Ershad Kunnakkadan. The price of the simplicity is high: 10% plus $0.50 on every direct sale, plus card processing at 2.9% plus $0.30, and a flat 30% on sales that come through Gumroad's Discover marketplace; only sellers passing $20,000 in a calendar month drop to 5% plus $0.50. There is no monthly fee, refunds return Gumroad's share, and chargebacks cost the creator the sale and the processing fee but no penalty. Payouts are weekly on a fixed weekday by country, after a seven-day hold, and — since a change creators noticed in March 2026 — only once the balance reaches $100. Public reviews are poor: the Trustpilot profile scores 1.4 from about 415 reviews, most of them about held or missing payouts and support that is hard to reach.

Pricing clarity
4.0
Feature set
3.5
Ease of use
4.5
Expert grade C+Read review →

Barclaycard Payments

Platform / Acquirer
B-

Barclaycard Payments is the merchant-acquiring arm of Barclays Bank PLC, the business that has signed UK shops up to take cards since Barclaycard launched the country's first credit card on 29 June 1966 and installed the UK's first electronic point-of-sale terminal in 1986. It is one of the largest acquirers in the UK — the company says it processed more than nine billion card payments in 2025 for more than 160,000 businesses, settling in 18 currencies and accepting 118 — and it is in the middle of the biggest change in its history: in April 2025 Barclays agreed a partnership under which Brookfield Asset Management will help run the business as a standalone company, Barclays will put in about £400 million, and Brookfield can buy a majority stake from year three. A new chief executive, Jason Lalor, formerly of Mastercard, Conferma and Square, started in January 2026. For merchants the offer splits in two. Small businesses get Smartpay Anywhere, a £29 + VAT pocket reader with no contract and no monthly fee, or Smartpay Touch, a £29 + VAT-a-month Android terminal on a 12-month term with no exit fee; both settle next working day for sales taken before 7pm. Traditional countertop and portable terminals come on 18-month contracts at £16 or £18 + VAT a month after a free first year, with an exit fee if you leave early. Barclaycard publishes no rate card — every account is priced on turnover, with representative examples of 0.7% + 3p on an in-person debit card and 2.05% + 3p on a keyed credit card — and its service reputation is the weak point: the only Trustpilot profile blends consumer-card and merchant reviews and is dominated by complaints about reaching a person.

Payout
Next working day (sales before 7pm on Smartpay; before 9pm on Countertop and Portable)
Expert grade B-Read review →

Tyro

Platform / Acquirer
B+

Tyro Payments Limited is a Sydney-based merchant acquirer and bank, founded in 2003, granted a specialist credit card institution licence in 2005 and a full Australian banking licence in 2015, and listed on the ASX as TYR since 2019. It serves more than 77,800 Australian merchants, processed $44.3 billion in transaction value in the year to June 2026, and reported gross profit of $231.8 million, EBITDA of $66.9 million and statutory profit before tax of $22.3 million for that year. Its pricing is published and flat: 1.3% including GST on every card transaction for businesses under $20,000 a month, a custom quote above that, and a Pro Touch or Pro Key terminal at $29 a month, a Pro Lite at $19, or a Tap to Pay app on your own phone for nothing — with no lock-in contract, no joining fee and no break fee. New customers transacting more than $20,000 a month who join before 24 November 2026 get 1% until 31 March 2027. Takings settle seven days a week, the same day, into a fee-free Tyro Transaction Account protected by the Financial Claims Scheme, or next business day to an outside bank. Tyro integrates with more than 580 POS and practice-management systems, routes debit through the cheapest network with Tap & Save, and lends up to $400,000 against card takings. The record has one scar: a January 2021 terminal outage that left some merchants unable to take cards for weeks and produced a Federal Court class action that Tyro settled in principle in February 2023 without admitting liability. Nigel Lee became chief executive in January 2026, and Tyro's Australian Trustpilot profile is 4.2 from about 560 reviews, 69% five-star and 20% one-star.

Payout
Same day, 7 days a week, into a Tyro Transaction Account
Expert grade B+Read review →

Flywire

Platform / Acquirer
B

Flywire is a Boston-headquartered payments platform, incorporated in July 2009 as peerTransfer to move international tuition money and renamed Flywire in 2016, that now collects large, often cross-border receivables for about 5,300 clients in education, healthcare, travel and B2B — more than 3,300 educational institutions, more than 150 healthcare systems and roughly 1,800 travel and business clients. It listed on Nasdaq as FLYW in May 2021, processed $37.6 billion in total payment volume in 2025 on revenue of $623 million and net income of $13.5 million, and has bought its way into new verticals: Simplee (healthcare, 2020), WPM (UK universities, 2021), Cohort Go (2022), StudyLink (Australian admissions, 2023), Invoiced (B2B receivables, 2024) and Sertifi (hotel payments, $330 million, February 2025). Clients sign negotiated agreements and Flywire publishes no rate card; its revenue is a percentage of each payment that varies by payment method, currency pair and region, plus fixed fees on domestic transactions, and the payer sees the total, including any Flywire fee and the currency conversion, before confirming. Its subsidiary Flywire Global Corp. holds money-transmitter licences in 46 US jurisdictions. Two things temper the picture: a securities class action, Hickman v. Flywire, has been pending in the Eastern District of New York since July 2025 over how the company described the effect of student-visa policy on its growth, and Flywire has voluntarily reported apparent sanctions violations to OFAC after an internal review. Its Trustpilot score is 4.0 from about 3,150 reviews, mostly written by students and patients paying through it rather than the institutions that choose it.

Pricing clarity
2.0
Feature set
4.5
Ease of use
4.0
Expert grade BRead review →

Teya

Platform / Acquirer
B

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.

Payout
Next working day; daily incl. weekends optional
Expert grade BRead review →
Browse all 157 reviews →

For merchants

Compare processors on published facts — rates, fees, contract terms and support — with a grade that explains itself.

Browse reviews →

For providers

Claim your listing to file corrections and track them. Not reviewed yet? Request one and we will assess you against the same six criteria as everyone else.

Claim your listing →Request a review →

Free API + MCP

Every review, as agent tools.

The grades, rates and fees are open behind a free API and an MCP server, so Claude or any MCP client can query the catalogue directly. No key, no waiting list.

search_reviewsget_reviewcompare_processors

The library

Latest from our blog

Expert insights and industry analysis.

View all articles
Keying in a card costs about a point more at every processor. Visa's own rate table shows where the point goes
Payment ProcessingBuyer guide

Keying in a card costs about a point more at every processor. Visa's own rate table shows where the point goes

Square, Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Clover, SumUp and QuickBooks all charge 3.4% to 3.5% to key a card in, against 2.3% to 2.7% to tap it. We put nine processors' rates on one basis, then went to Visa's April 2026 interchange table to see how much of the premium is real cost, and for which cards it is nothing at all.

September 16, 2026•Payment Review Editorial Team
Amex tripled its OptBlue ceiling in April. What accepting American Express actually costs a small business now
Payment ProcessingBuyer guide

Amex tripled its OptBlue ceiling in April. What accepting American Express actually costs a small business now

Since 17 April 2026 a business can run up to $3 million a year of American Express through its ordinary processor, not $1 million. Whether it costs the same as Visa depends on the processor: Square and Stripe charge one rate, Shopify and Squarespace add up to 0.7 points, and interchange-plus providers print the table.

September 16, 2026•Payment Review Editorial Team
What a chargeback costs at nine processors, and which ones give the fee back when you win
Payment ProcessingBuyer guide

What a chargeback costs at nine processors, and which ones give the fee back when you win

A lost dispute costs you the sale. The fee on top is the processor's, and the rules for it are all different: Square charges nothing, Stripe now charges twice, PayPal has three tiers, and QuickBooks keeps its $25 even when you win. We read nine fee schedules so the comparison is on one basis.

September 15, 2026•Payment Review Editorial Team
View all articles

Need help finding the right payment processor?

Our team of experts can provide personalized recommendations based on your business needs.

Get Expert Advice