62 ranked
Companies that hold the acquiring relationship and run their own processing stack. Everyone further down this list ultimately settles on rails like these.
Ranked by grade, then by average category score. Equal grades share a position — where our evidence does not separate two providers, neither does this list.
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.
InfinitePay is the Brazilian merchant brand of CloudWalk, a São Paulo payments company founded in 2013 that launched InfinitePay in 2019. Its legal entity, CloudWalk Instituição de Pagamento e Serviços Ltda., is authorised by the Banco Central do Brasil as a payment institution and acquirer, so it signs the merchant agreement itself. Merchants take cards on the R$199 Maquininha Smart terminal, on their own phone through InfiniteTap or Tap to Pay on iPhone, or online through payment links and a checkout API. Pix is free, and so is the business account the money lands in. There is no rent, monthly fee or fixed-term contract. Card rates are published in full and fall across four tiers as last month's card sales rise. As of November 2026, a seller under R$20,000 a month pays 1.37% on Visa and Mastercard debit, 3.15% on a single credit payment and 12.40% on 12 instalments, with every instalment paid out the next business day. Instant payout costs more: 2.29% debit and 5.49% credit. Sellers above R$20,000 a month can choose to wait for instalments and pay much less, from 1.62% on credit. Reclame Aqui gives InfinitePay its top RA1000 rating, and the Central Bank's complaint index for the third quarter of 2026 puts it among the lowest of Brazil's 15 largest institutions. Recurring complaints concern accounts blocked with money inside, which the contract lets InfinitePay hold for up to 180 days after closing an account on suspicion of fraud.
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.
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.
Shift4 Payments is a full-service payment processor and POS provider specializing in integrated commerce solutions for restaurants, hospitality, retail, and enterprise merchants.
Donorbox is a US donation and fundraising platform run by Rebel Idealist Inc., a Delaware corporation based in Alexandria, Virginia. Founder and CEO Charles Zhang started it in 2014 as a free WordPress donation plugin. It sells donation forms, fundraising and crowdfunding pages, peer-to-peer campaigns, event ticketing, memberships, a donor CRM, text-to-give and an in-person kiosk app. Donorbox does not process payments itself. Each organisation connects its own Stripe or PayPal account, donations land in that account, and Donorbox takes a platform fee on top of the processor's fee. As of October 2026 the free Standard plan charges a 2.95% platform fee on donation forms and pages and 3.95% on events, memberships and supporter peer-to-peer pages. Pro costs $150 a month and lowers those to 1.75% and 2%. Premium is quote-only, with platform fees of 1.6% to 2%. Processing is extra: Donorbox quotes 2.2% + 30 cents for US nonprofits on Stripe's discounted rate, and 2.9% + 30 cents for other organisations. Donors can choose to cover the fees. There is no contract or setup fee. Payouts follow the Stripe or PayPal schedule, every two business days by default for US Stripe accounts. In June 2026 Donorbox said more than 100,000 organisations had raised over $4 billion through it. Trustpilot shows a 4.3 TrustScore, but 26% of its 106 reviews are one-star.
Comgate is a Czech payment institution, licensed and supervised by the Czech National Bank, that sells an online payment gateway for e-shops and card terminals for shops and restaurants. Its legal entity is Comgate a.s., registered in Hradec Králové, with a second office in Prague. It is also a Visa and Mastercard card acquirer, so for most merchants the payment contract is signed directly with Comgate rather than a bank. As of October 2026 it publishes full price lists in Czech crowns (and euro lists for Slovakia). On the Easy plan you pay a flat 1% on EU consumer cards and 2% on other cards. On the Profi plan you pay 0.67% + CZK 1 on EU consumer cards, with higher rates for business and non-EU cards. New merchants get introductory rates for three months, and first-time card merchants can use a Start plan that is free up to CZK 50,000 a month for six months. The gateway's CZK 100 monthly fee is waived above CZK 100,000 of monthly volume. Payouts go out every working day, usually the day after the purchase. The contract has no fixed term and can be ended on two months' notice with no fee. Comgate signs merchants based in the Czech Republic and Slovakia; businesses elsewhere are assessed case by case. It accepts Visa and Mastercard, not American Express. Independent review data is thin: Firmy.cz shows 3.3 out of 5 from 57 ratings, and we found no regulatory enforcement naming the company.
Stone is the small and mid-size business brand of StoneCo, the Nasdaq-listed (STNE) Brazilian payments and banking group. The merchant agreement is with Stone Instituição de Pagamento S.A., which the Banco Central do Brasil authorises as a card acquirer (credenciadora) and e-money issuer. Stone sells card terminals (maquininhas), a tap-on-phone app called TapStone, payment links, e-commerce processing, a free business account (Conta PJ) and working-capital credit. As of October 2026 it publishes some rates: TapStone at 0.87% for debit and 1.90% for one-off credit (crédito à vista), and payment links at 2.99% for one-off credit. Terminal rates are personalised: the terminal page advertises debit from 0.74% and credit from 2.99%, and you get your own rates after an assessment. The contract has no fixed term and the merchant can end it on 30 days' notice without penalty. StoneCo's cheaper micro-merchant brand, Ton, is a sibling sold separately, with its own published plans.
PagBank, known until May 2023 as PagSeguro, is a Brazilian card acquirer, card-machine (maquininha) seller and digital bank based in São Paulo. It began in 2006 as an online payments service of the internet group UOL, which still controls it, and its holding company, PagSeguro Digital Ltd., has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since January 2018. As of June 2026 it reported 6.2 million active merchants and R$133.4 billion of payment volume in the quarter. PagBank is the licensed acquirer itself: its payment institution signs up each merchant directly, so there is no reseller or processor in between. Merchants buy a terminal outright, from about R$17 to R$196 as listed in October 2026, with no rent and no monthly fee, and pay a percentage per sale that depends on when they want the money. For Visa and Mastercard credit sales on a machine, PagBank's rate page lists 4.99% for same-day payout, 3.99% at 14 days and 3.19% at 30 days, with debit at 1.99%. Separate promotional plans and the online products carry their own, different prices, so the rate you actually get depends on which plan you join. The contract has no fixed term and either side can end it at any time, but it lets PagBank set reserves, hold balances and block accounts on its own risk assessment, and blocked accounts and withheld balances recur in recent Reclame Aqui complaints and in the consumer cases its annual report describes. PagBank holds Reclame Aqui's top RA1000 reputation, with 90.5% of complaints resolved over April to September 2026.
Chase Payment Solutions is the merchant services arm of the #1 US bank, offering small and mid-sized businesses a deeply integrated combination of payment processing, same-day deposits, and banking tools. They're backed by the trust and scale of JPMorgan Chase but with flat-rate fees that may not suit high-volume merchants.
Cielo is one of Brazil's two largest card acquirers, based in Barueri, São Paulo, and it serves Brazilian businesses only. It was incorporated in 1995 and traded as VisaNet until it was renamed Cielo (announced in November 2009; some sources date the formal change to July 2010). Banco do Brasil and Bradesco control it, directly and through companies they jointly own, and took it off the B3 stock exchange in August 2024. Cielo signs the merchant agreement itself and sells card machines (maquininhas), tap-to-phone, payment links and e-commerce APIs. As of October 2026 its plans page lists two published plans. The Aluguel rental plan, for registered companies (CNPJ), charges 1.19% on debit and 3.45% on one-payment credit. The terminal is free in any month your card sales reach R$15,000; otherwise it costs R$99.90 a month. The Comodato plan, open to individuals too, costs a one-off R$238.80 (or 12 payments of R$19.90) and charges 1.90% debit and 4.30% credit. Both plans pay out in up to one day, subject to eligibility. Instalment sales cost much more: up to 14.79% (Aluguel) or 19.00% (Comodato) for 12 instalments. The agreement has no fixed term and either side can end it on 30 days' written notice without penalty. Cielo holds Reclame Aqui's top RA1000 rating, but improper charges are the problem tagged on 52.9% of the complaints it classifies.
Satispay is a Milan-based mobile payment network. Shoppers pay from the Satispay app instead of with a card, and merchants accept those payments through a free business account, with no card terminal. It is not a card acquirer. The merchant contract is with Satispay Europe S.A., an electronic money institution licensed in Luxembourg (CSSF register W00000010), which credits payments to the merchant's e-money account and sweeps them to the merchant's bank. As of October 2026, physical stores that sign up from September 2026 pay nothing on payments under €10 and 0.95% on payments of €10 or more. Tobacconists and newsagents pay 0.5% at €10 and above. Online payments cost 1.5%, plus €0.20 from €10, and vending machines pay 1%. Sign-up, payouts and cancellation are free, and the terms have no fixed term or exit fee. Optional Business Premium plans for visibility and loyalty run from €5.99 to €299.90 a month. Satispay says it has 6.5 million users and more than 450,000 merchants. Its website serves Italy, France and Luxembourg, but the user base is overwhelmingly Italian. The main caveat is pricing stability: in April 2025 Satispay replaced free sub-€10 payments with a flat 1%, which drew protests from bars and tobacconists. It reversed that change for new merchants from September 2026; existing merchants were told their updated terms by email.
MONEI is a payment platform from Málaga, Spain, launched in 2015 by Alex Saiz Verdaguer. Since 2021 it has been a payment institution authorised by the Banco de España (register number 6911), and it acquires Visa and Mastercard payments itself, so the merchant contract is with MONEI. As of October 2026 it sells one plan, MONEI One. Online card payments cost Interchange++ (the card schemes' pass-through fees plus a 0.10% acquiring fee) and a MONEI fee of 0.90% + €0.25. The percentage falls to 0.60%, 0.25% and then 0.15% as monthly volume passes €500,000, €1 million and €5 million. In-person card payments through the MONEI Pay phone app cost Interchange++ plus 0.25%, with no fixed fee. There is a daily platform fee of €0.15, a €0.20 fee per payout and a €15 fee per chargeback. Bizum, Spain's mobile payment scheme, is switched on by default, and MONEI can route card payments to a merchant's own bank terminal or Stripe account. It is only open to businesses registered in Spain or Andorra, it does not take American Express, support is by chat and email only, and a new account's online sales are held for 30 days before the first payout.
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.
Moniepoint is a Nigerian business banking and payments group, founded in 2015 as TeamApt and renamed Moniepoint in January 2023. A merchant opens a free business account with Moniepoint Microfinance Bank, which the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) licenses. It can then order a card terminal that also accepts bank transfers. Its sister company TeamApt Limited holds a CBN switching and processing licence and runs Monnify, the group's online payment gateway. As of November 2026 Moniepoint's own pages show a POS payment fee of about 0.5%, charged in ₦1,000 bands and capped at ₦100, plus 7.5% VAT, and a one-off ₦21,500 charge to get a terminal. Monnify charges 1.5% capped at ₦2,000 for local cards, USSD and bank transfers, and 4% for international cards, all excluding VAT. POS payments land in the merchant's Moniepoint account immediately, and Monnify settles the same day by 10pm. Moniepoint calls itself Nigeria's largest merchant acquirer and says it handles 8 in every 10 in-person payments in the country. Its business app has 4.6 stars on Google Play from about 272,000 ratings. However, Trustpilot reviews are split between five stars and one star, mostly over stuck transfers and blocked accounts. In April 2024 Moniepoint was one of several fintechs that paused new account opening for about five weeks after a CBN directive, according to TechCabal and Nairametrics.
Transbank is Chile's largest card acquirer, which traces its origins to a company a group of banks set up in 1989 and is still owned by banks. Its biggest shareholders are Banco de Chile, Banco Santander-Chile and Scotiabank Chile. It signs merchants directly under its own Visa, Mastercard and American Express acquiring licences, and it sells card terminals, the Webpay online checkout, Oneclick stored-card payments and free payment links. Its tariff page lists 2.29% on credit cards and 1.49% on debit and prepaid cards, plus IVA, for merchants that join from 1 September 2026. Two help-centre articles still quoted 2.35% and 1.75% in October 2026, so confirm the rate in writing. Existing merchants are priced differently. Debit sales made before 2pm on a business day are paid the next business day, and credit sales a day later. The contract has no fixed term and either side can end it on 30 days' notice. For most of its life Transbank's pricing was regulated. Its acquiring margin was freed in January 2026, after the Supreme Court upheld a 2025 competition-tribunal ruling and the competition authority confirmed Transbank's share of acquirer processing, by number of transactions, had been below 50% for six months. Its record includes a 2024 fine from the financial regulator and several lawsuits from large merchants and payment companies over fee increases.
Przelewy24 is a Polish online payment gateway run by PayPro S.A. of Poznań, a national payment institution supervised by Poland's financial regulator, the KNF. The Danish group Nets took control of PayPro in 2019, Nets merged into Italy's Nexi in 2021, and Nexi's June 2025 report lists PayPro as wholly owned. It gives a Polish online shop the payment methods Polish shoppers expect in one integration: BLIK, pay-by-link bank transfers, Visa and Mastercard cards, Google Pay and Apple Pay, plus instalments and buy-now-pay-later through partners. As of October 2026 the standard fee for BLIK, bank transfers and PLN card payments is 1.29% + PLN 0.30 per transaction, with VAT added where the law requires it. There is no monthly fee, refunds are free, and the PLN 59 activation fee is refunded once you complete 10 transactions in your first two months. Funds are available by the end of the next business day, and four PLN payouts a month to a Polish bank account are free. The contract has no fixed term and either side can end it on one month's notice. Pricing and terms are unusually well published. The weak points are payments outside Poland, which cost more and need foreign-currency accounts, broad rights to hold funds (up to 180 days on card transactions under review), a PLN 100 fee it can charge on each chargeback, and a Trustpilot score of 1.3 that is mostly payer complaints but includes merchants describing frozen funds and slow verification.
Vipps MobilePay is the bank-owned Nordic mobile wallet formed in November 2022 when Norway's Vipps and Denmark's MobilePay merged. It is the payment app most consumers in Norway and Denmark already carry, and a large one in Finland, so for a Nordic business it is less a choice of processor than a payment method customers expect to see. The merchant agreement is signed directly with Vipps MobilePay AS, a Norwegian e-money institution supervised by Finanstilsynet, with branches in Copenhagen and Helsinki. Prices are published per country and charged per transaction, with no monthly fee for the payment products. As of October 2026 online payments cost 2.99% + NOK 1 in Norway, 0.59% + DKK 1 in Denmark (rising to 0.89% + DKK 1 on 1 January 2027) and 2.49% + EUR 0.20 in Finland; in-person payments through a Vipps/MobilePay number or the mobile point-of-sale cost 1.75% in Norway and Finland and 0.99% in Denmark. The merchant terms exclude VAT unless stated. There is no fixed term: either side can end the agreement on two months' notice. Funds settle daily by default. The weaknesses are scope and reputation. It is a Nordic wallet, not a general card acquirer, it sold its multi-method Checkout product to Kustom in 2026, and consumer reviews on Trustpilot are poor. MobilePay will be renamed Vipps in Denmark, Finland and Greenland on 12 January 2027.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The US payments arm of Xplor Technologies, and the company you knew as Clearent until it dropped the name in July 2025. It is a straightforward mid-market acquirer with two things going for it that most of its peers do not have: interchange-plus is the default rather than the upsell, and next-day funding runs on an 11:00 p.m. Eastern cut-off, which is about as late as this industry gets. The trade-offs are the ordinary ISO ones — a three-year term and a per-location early termination fee reported at $395, a PCI non-compliance charge around $25 a month, and an annual fee that steps up after year one. Nothing here is published by the company, which is the recurring frustration.
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.
Nexi S.p.A. is one of Europe's largest payments companies, headquartered in Milan and traded on Euronext Milan, and describes itself as Europe's PayTech. It was assembled through consolidation — most consequentially the merger with the Danish group Nets, completed on 1 July 2021, and the merger with the Italian rival SIA, effective 1 January 2022, which together were widely reported as creating the largest European paytech by EBITDA — and now runs three businesses: Merchant Solutions (acquiring and acceptance), Issuing Solutions (card issuing and processing for banks) and Digital Banking Solutions (clearing, open banking, ATM and network services). Adyen carries a far larger market value and Worldline has at times been described as Europe's largest acquirer by revenue, so "largest" depends on the measure — but the scale is not in doubt. In the first half of 2026 the group reported net revenues of €1,736 million, EBITDA of €870 million and merchant transactions of 10,225 million worth €423 billion, with Merchant Solutions accounting for roughly 56% of revenue. What a merchant will not find is a price. Nexi sells overwhelmingly through partner banks and through country brands rather than direct, so acceptance terms are set by whichever bank or channel signs the merchant, and there is no group rate card to compare. The company is also in transition at the top: in March 2026 it appointed Bernardo Mingrone, previously group chief financial officer and CEO of Nexi Payments, to succeed Paolo Bertoluzzo after a decade as chief executive, and the shares fell on the announcement.
Nuvei is a Montreal-based global payment technology company founded in 2003 that offers 700+ payment methods across 200+ markets and deep vertical expertise in iGaming, fintech, and high-risk sectors — but carries meaningful risks around contract terms, pricing transparency, and customer support quality.
Getnet is the Brazilian card acquirer owned by Grupo Santander. It was founded in 2003 in Campo Bom, Rio Grande do Sul, bought by Santander Brasil between 2014 and 2019, briefly listed on B3 and Nasdaq in 2021, and taken private again by Santander's payments arm, PagoNxt, in 2022 and 2023. It is authorised by the Banco Central do Brasil as a payment institution and signs the merchant agreement itself. Getnet sells card machines (Get Lite, Get Clássica, Get Smart), Get Tap for Android phones, a payment link, an e-commerce checkout and gateway, recurring billing, Pix and receivables prepayment, with sales paid into its own Get Conta account. Unlike many bank-owned acquirers it publishes rates. The rented-terminal table on its machines page, unchanged since at least January 2026, charges Visa and Mastercard 0.95% on debit and 3.15% on one-payment credit for sellers taking R$10,000 to R$20,000 a month, falling to 0.85% and 2.69% above R$80,000, paid in two business days. A Black Friday promotion running in November 2026, with no published end date, offers smaller sellers the Get Lite machine at 0.99% debit and 2.89% credit; in July the same offer was 1.39% and 3.49%. Clássica and Smart rentals of R$79.90 and R$129.90 a month are waived at higher volumes. Other Getnet pages still show older tables, so check the rate in your own sign-up terms. The accreditation contract has no fixed term and can be ended on 30 days' notice, but it lets Getnet change rates at any time, set reserves unilaterally and hold payouts after the contract ends, for up to 365 days where Getnet terminates it for cause. On Reclame Aqui Getnet holds an Ótima rating, though only 65.3% of complainants say they would do business with it again.
Rede is the merchant acquiring business of Itaú Unibanco, Brazil's largest private bank. It started in 1996 as Redecard, Itaú took it private in 2012, and it has traded as Rede since 2013. The legal entity is Redecard Instituição de Pagamento S.A., authorised by the Banco Central do Brasil as a payment institution in the acquirer (credenciador) category. Rede signs the merchant agreement itself, so there is no reseller or sub-merchant layer between you and the acquirer. It rents out the orange "laranjinha" card terminals, and it also sells a payment-link tool, the e.Rede online API, the Maxipago gateway and prepayment of card receivables. It does not publish its card rates; its own FAQ says they are negotiated per business. It does publish terminal rental prices, which as of November 2026 run from R$19 to R$109 a month. Itaú Empresas account holders can have that rental waived once they bring enough sales volume to the bank. The contract has no fixed term, and either side can end it on 15 days' notice without penalty. Itaú reports that Rede was Brazil's largest acquirer by card volume in 2025. Rede holds Reclame Aqui's top RA1000 rating. It has settled two CADE competition cases, in 2014 and 2018.
Niubiz is Peru's largest card acquirer. It was known as VisaNet Perú until February 2020 and is run by Compañía Peruana de Medios de Pago S.A.C. from Miraflores, Lima. It signs merchants directly, rents them POS terminals and also sells an online gateway (Pago Web), payment links, QR acceptance, working-capital loans and a cash-in agent network. It is owned by Peruvian banks and, as of Indecopi's 2021 market study, Visa; BBVA Perú reported a 20.20% stake at 30 September 2025. Niubiz publishes a rate table by business segment, as Peru's central bank requires. Weighted-average rates run from 1.53% to 3.38% on credit cards, 1.79% to 2.73% on debit and 3.88% to 4.03% on foreign cards, with maximums up to 4.95%. Your own rate is agreed when you sign up, and the table does not say whether IGV is included. Terminal rental prices are not published. Its help centre says sales are paid the next business day if your account is with BCP, BBVA or Scotiabank, and in two business days at other banks, though the contract allows up to three. The contract has no fixed term, and either side can end it on 30 days' notice by notarial letter. It lets Niubiz hold suspect transactions, defer payouts by up to 30 days after unremedied fraud, and deduct card-not-present transactions an issuer flags as errors without asking for your documents. Dispute fees run from about $2 to $842 per case, and there are monthly penalty programmes for merchants above dispute or fraud thresholds.
Tyl by NatWest is the card-acceptance service of National Westminster Bank plc, sold to UK small businesses since 2019. 'Tyl by NatWest' is a trading name of the bank itself, so NatWest is the acquirer and holds the merchant agreement. As of October 2026, businesses taking up to £50,000 a year in card payments pay 1.39% + 5p on UK and European personal cards and 1.99% + 5p on every other card, including business and international cards. Businesses above £50,000 get a custom quote built on five rate bands. Card machines rent for £13.99 to £19.99 a month plus VAT on a 12-month contract. Tap to Pay on iPhone and Android has no rental fee, and the online payments package costs £14.95 a month plus VAT on a one-month rolling plan. Money is settled the next business day into any UK bank account, and you do not need to bank with NatWest. The weak points are what Tyl does not publish: Amex rates, the chargeback handling fee, the PCI SafePay fee and the early termination fee all sit in quotes or in terms that are visible only after you sign up. Trustpilot reviewers rate Tyl highly overall, but a steady minority complain about support, held funds and contracts that renewed automatically.
Ecommpay is a London-based online card acquirer and payment platform. Its UK entity, Ecommpay Limited, is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority as a payment institution (FRN 607597) and is a principal member of Visa and Mastercard, so it holds the merchant agreement itself rather than reselling a bank's. EU merchants are served by a sister company under common ownership, ECOMMBX LTD, a Cyprus e-money institution that uses the Ecommpay trademark under licence. Most of Ecommpay's business is quoted, custom pricing for mid-market and enterprise online merchants in travel, digital goods, financial services, mobility and retail. It also publishes a rate card for UK micro-businesses, dated 23 October 2025 and still the version on its site in an archived copy from 5 October 2026: 1.30% + £0.20 on UK consumer cards and 3% + £0.20 on international consumer cards, with no setup or monthly fee, no fixed term, and settlement five business days after each day's batch. Extra fees apply for currency conversion (2.5%), declined authorisations (5p), refunds (50p) and chargebacks (£15). The company is privately held and controlled by its founder, Aleksejs Sjarki, through a Cyprus holding company. Its public review footprint is small but positive. A 2021 article by the Russian outlet The Bell, citing three unnamed sources, named Ecommpay as one of the biggest players in the late-2010s cross-border payments market that it said moved illegal online-gambling money out of Russia. We found no regulator or court finding, lawsuit or enforcement action naming the company.
Stancer is a French payment institution about 90% owned by iliad SA, the telecoms company behind Free. It is authorised by the ACPR as a payment institution, including for acquiring, and acquires card payments itself, so the merchant contract is with Stancer rather than a bank. It sells to French small businesses through a payment terminal, Tap to Pay on iPhone and Android, payment links and an online checkout API, and it also handles SEPA Direct Debit. Pricing is published and low. As of October 2026 (live pricing page and Pricing Conditions dated August 2024), French CB cards and Visa and Mastercard cards issued in the EEA cost 0.7% + €0.07 on Stancer's terminal, with no fixed fee under €7, and 0.7% + €0.15 for Tap to Pay, links and online payments. Visa and Mastercard cards issued outside the EEA cost 2.5% plus a fixed fee. All prices exclude tax. There is no setup fee, no monthly fee and no fixed term, and the terminal is free in a month with more than 150 transactions on it (the product page says 150 or more), or €15 a month otherwise. The trade-offs are real. Funds reach your bank within seven working days rather than the next day, and faster payout costs 2% of the amount. Stancer does not accept American Express, chargebacks cost €25 on Visa and Mastercard, and the contract makes you pledge a cash collateral that it can top up from your balance and keep for 13 months after you leave. Trustpilot reviews are split, with complaints about frozen funds and slow support.
MultiSafepay is an Amsterdam payment service provider for European small and mid-size businesses. It is licensed by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) as a payment institution, is authorised to acquire payment transactions, and says it acts as acquirer and processor for Visa, Mastercard and Bancontact. Merchants sign directly with MultiSafepay B.V. One contract covers online payments, in-person terminals and about 40 payment methods, including iDEAL | Wero, Bancontact, cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Klarna, in3 and Riverty. It does not publish rates. As of October 2026 its pricing pages for the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Italy all ask you to request a quote. They say you pay per successful transaction with no set setup or monthly fee. Payouts reach Dutch and Belgian bank accounts in one business day by default, and other countries in three to five. The company dates its business to 1999, when founder Olaf Geurs set up MultiPay, although its own timeline gives 2005 as the year MultiSafepay was founded. It has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ant International, the owner of Antom, since 1 July 2024. The general terms run for an indefinite period, and you can end them at any time. However, they let MultiSafepay set up a security deposit whenever it chooses and keep it for up to 12 months after you leave. In 2016 DNB fined MultiSafepay EUR 50,000 over its compliance function. DNB also placed a curator at the firm from November 2016 to June 2017.
Lloyds Bank Cardnet is the card-acquiring business of Lloyds Bank plc, run as a joint venture with Fiserv, and it serves UK businesses only. It is not available to US merchants, and every figure in this review is in pounds sterling (GBP). The merchant agreement is with Lloyds Bank plc trading as Cardnet. Cardnet Merchant Services Limited, the joint-venture company, is controlled by Lloyds, and its 2025 accounts say Fiserv's FDR Limited, LLC holds about 49% of its shares. The UK Payment Systems Regulator counts Cardnet among the five largest UK acquirers. The joint-venture company's 2025 accounts report about £57.5 billion of card payments across more than a billion transactions. Cardnet publishes no rate card. Each account is priced individually, and the pricing page gives only worked examples, such as 0.5% plus a 3p authorisation fee on a £100 in-person Visa debit payment. Card machines rent for £21 or £23 a month plus VAT, there is a £10 minimum monthly charge, and other fees, such as PCI DSS management, are set in each merchant's own schedule. Both versions of the merchant agreement that Lloyds publishes roll on with one month's notice, but leaving within six months triggers an early-termination fee, which the December 2021 version sets at £200. Lloyds also sells Lloyds Accept, a separate pay-as-you-go app for its own business-account customers with card turnover under £100,000, at a published 1.5% + 20p.
Windcave is a New Zealand payments company, founded in Auckland in 1999 as Direct Payment Solutions (DPS). It traded as Payment Express from 2015 and as Windcave from 1 July 2019. It sells three things that most providers split up: an online payment gateway, payment terminals it designs and builds itself, and merchant acquiring, meaning it can hold your merchant account as well as carry your transactions. It acquires cards in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Canada, the EU and the US, and it is strongest in unattended payments such as parking, vending and kiosks. Windcave publishes no prices. Gateway fees, terminal rental and merchant service rates are all quoted per account, on blended, interchange-plus or interchange-plus-plus pricing depending on the country. Its merchant FAQ says acquiring agreements run for 36 months, while its published standard terms define a one-month term that renews automatically, and those terms set an early-termination fee of at least NZ$400, A$400, £400 or €400 per merchant facility. Funds generally settle the next business day. Windcave is privately owned by its founder and chief executive, Andrew (Andy) Cullen. Public review data is thin: eight one-star Trustpilot reviews and no BBB profile, as of October 2026.
Geidea is a Riyadh-based payments company that signs up merchants directly, supplies the card terminals and settles card sales into their bank accounts. It also sells a SoftPOS app (Geidea Mobile POS), an online payment gateway, payment links and its own point-of-sale software. This review covers the Saudi business, which is Geidea's home market; it also has sites for the UAE and Egypt. Geidea holds a Payment Institution licence from the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), and in 2021 it was the only non-bank in the Kingdom with a SAMA acquiring licence. Its merchant terms publish a fee schedule. As of the 17 August 2025 terms, in-store mada payments cost 0.7% below SAR 100 and 0.8% above, capped at SAR 160. Credit cards cost 2.75% + SAR 1. Online, the gateway and payment links cost SAR 499 to set up and SAR 99 a month, with mada at 1% and credit cards at 2.5% + SAR 1. All of these fees are subject to 15% VAT. The contract is less friendly: a two-year term that renews automatically, early-termination fees of up to 24 months, minimum monthly sales per terminal, and the right to withhold funds after you leave.
PAYONE is a Frankfurt-based card acquirer and payment service provider for businesses in Germany and Austria. It is a joint venture of Worldline, which holds 60%, and the DSV Group, the payments arm of Germany's savings banks (Sparkassen), which holds 40%. PAYONE GmbH holds the merchant agreement itself and is supervised by BaFin as an e-money institution. It says it serves 277,000 customers and processes over 7.65 billion transactions a year. Small-business prices are published in euros, as of October 2026. Tap on Mobile, which turns a phone into a card reader, has no monthly fee or contract and costs 1.90% per Visa or Mastercard credit card payment and 0.89% per debit card payment, with a €0.15 minimum. Terminal plans run from a pay-as-you-go option with a 24-month device term to flat-rate packages from €29.90 to €44.90 a month on 36- or 60-month contracts. Online plans start at 2.49% + €0.99 with no monthly fee. PAYONE's price list says all fees are subject to VAT. Fixed-term contracts renew for 12 months unless cancelled three months before the end. The main concern is regulatory: in 2023 BaFin barred PAYONE from processing transactions for certain merchants in a high-risk e-commerce portfolio, in January 2025 it announced higher capital requirements and a special representative, and in December 2025 it announced fines totalling €95,000 over anti-money-laundering failings.
Trust Payments is a UK payments group that both runs a payment gateway and acquires card payments itself. It grew out of Secure Trading, an online card-payments firm that was operating by 1998. In May 2019 an investor group coordinated by CORDET Capital Partners bought the Secure Trading companies and moved them under a new holding company, and the brand became Trust Payments in 2020. Its acquiring licence sits with Trust Payments (Malta) Limited, which the Malta Financial Services Authority has authorised since June 2012, including for acquiring card transactions, and which the company says is a principal member of Visa and Mastercard. In the UK, TrustUK Payments Ltd is an FCA-authorised payment institution (firm reference 932557). It sells online payments, card terminals, Tap to Pay on Android and iPhone, card payouts, retail software through its Trust Retail arm, and revenue-based financing through YouLend. It openly courts higher-risk sectors such as gaming, crypto, forex and medical cannabis. As of October 2026 it publishes no processing rates or monthly fees: every account is priced in a quote, and a merchant can be asked for a rolling or fixed reserve, sized by risk, with funds held for at least 120 days from when they are added. Trustpilot reviews are mostly positive, with a minority of one-star reviews about reversed payments, chargeback losses and slow email support.
Antom is the merchant payments brand of Ant International, the Singapore-based company that runs Alipay+, WorldFirst and Bettr. It acquires card and wallet payments for online and in-store merchants through its own licensed companies in Singapore, the UK, the EU and the US. It says it supports more than 300 payment methods in over 200 markets, with unusually deep coverage of Asian e-wallets such as Alipay, GCash, DANA, Kakao Pay and Touch 'n Go. Around that sit hosted checkout, embedded payment elements, payment links, subscriptions, usage-based billing, invoicing, tax tools, fraud screening and a payment orchestration layer. Antom does not publish its processing rates. Larger merchants negotiate a contract, and Shopify and WooCommerce merchants sign up online at a rate Antom does not show publicly. Its published terms let it hold a reserve and a rolling reserve at its discretion, and keep collateral for at least 180 days after the account closes. Its US company, AUS Merchant Services (formerly Alipay US), agreed in July 2026 to pay an $85 million criminal penalty and forfeit $190 million under a non-prosecution agreement with the US Department of Justice. The agreement resolved allegations under the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and AUS admitted anti-money-laundering failures that let some Alibaba.com merchants use its services to sell prohibited products, including pharmaceuticals, into the US. Independent merchant reviews are too few to judge. This review is written for online businesses selling across borders, particularly into Asia, and contracting with Antom's Singapore company or one of its US, UK or EU companies.
Kushki is a Latin American payments company founded by Ecuadorians Aron Schwarzkopf and Sebastián Castro. It began as an online payment gateway and now calls itself the region's first non-bank regional acquirer. In October 2023 it announced regulatory approval to acquire card payments in Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia, with principal Visa and Mastercard membership in those four countries. It also serves merchants in Ecuador. It sells to large online merchants and to payment service providers (PSPs): card and alternative-method collection through an API, hosted checkout and payment links, payouts, and card-present terminals in Mexico and, since a May 2026 launch, Chile. Pricing is quoted per account. The general terms set a default minimum of USD 1,000 a month in fees, and the only rate card we found is the one its Chilean operator publishes on its regulatory-compliance page. As of October 2026 that card shows 2.0%–2.95% for credit, 1.0%–2.0% for debit and 2.90%–3.00% for international cards, plus VAT, with a USD 15 chargeback fee. Contracts run indefinitely and either side can end them on 30 days' notice, but Kushki can hold reserves and change fees on 30 days' notice. In March 2026 Chile's financial regulator, the CMF, fined the Chilean operator UF 300 for late regulatory reporting and for not reporting an October 2024 outage. There is almost no public merchant review base to judge service by.
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.
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.
Network International is a Dubai-based payments company. It acquires card payments for merchants in the UAE through its own N-Genius POS terminals, SoftPOS apps and the N-Genius Online gateway, and it processes cards for banks across the Middle East and Africa. The company was set up in 1994 as a subsidiary of the bank group now called Emirates NBD. It listed in London in 2019, was taken private by a Brookfield-led group on 17 September 2024, and merged with the UAE payments company Magnati on 1 October 2025. Network said then that the two brands would co-exist for the time being, and Network International is still sold under its own name as of October 2026. Merchant pricing is not published: you get a quote, and the merchant agreement adds fees on top of the per-transaction rate, such as terminal rent, a minimum-volume fee for months with card sales of AED 20,000 or less and a fee for daily statements. All fees are charged plus 5% VAT. The UAE merchant agreement (February 2025 version) is strict. It runs for 36 months, renews automatically for another 36 unless you give three months' notice, makes Network your exclusive provider, and charges a business that leaves early at least AED 25,000. Network can also hold settlement funds for up to 540 days after delivery or termination. The product range is broad and support runs 24/7 in the UAE. However, all 22 Trustpilot reviews are one-star, and they mostly describe hidden charges and held funds.
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.
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.
HiPay is a French payment service provider based in Levallois-Perret, outside Paris, that handles online, in-store and marketplace payments for mid-size and large European merchants. Its operating company, HiPay SAS, has been an authorised payment institution under France's banking supervisor, the ACPR, since August 2011, and passports that licence across the EU. The parent, HiPay Group, was spun out of the French digital media company HiMedia in June 2015 and trades on Euronext Growth Paris (ticker ALHYP). It processed €9.55 billion in 2025 for revenue of €74.8 million, and has reported a profit for three years running, though it booked a €1.4 million net loss in the first half of 2026. HiPay publishes no prices: its pricing page sends you to a sales form, and every rate, fee, payout schedule and contract term is negotiated per merchant. What it sells is a single contract covering cards, a long list of European local payment methods such as Bancontact, Bizum, MB Way, Bancomat Pay and Wero, PAX payment terminals and Tap to Pay in store, its own fraud tool (HiPay Sentinel), and a marketplace product built on escrow accounts. Retail is its core, and regulated online gambling is a fast-growing segment. Its Trustpilot score of 1.8 is dragged down by consumers disputing charges from merchants that use HiPay, not by reviews from merchants.
Moneris is Canada’s largest payment processor, providing point-of-sale systems, ecommerce payment gateways, and mobile payment solutions for businesses across Canada through a joint venture owned by Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal.
dLocal is an emerging-markets payment platform founded in 2016 in Montevideo, Uruguay by Sergio Fogel and Andres Bzurovski, and listed on Nasdaq since June 2021 as DLO. It exists to solve one problem: a global business that wants to sell in Brazil, India, Nigeria or Indonesia has to accept Pix, boleto, GCash, M-Pesa, UPI and local cards, and settle in currencies with capital controls. dLocal covers 60+ countries and more than 1,000 payment methods through a single integration, and counts Amazon, Shopify, Dropbox, Mailchimp, Shein and Tripadvisor among its merchants. In 2025 it processed $41 billion of total payment volume, up 60%, on revenue of $1.09 billion and gross profit of $403 million. It is also the most legally scrutinised company in this category: two Muddy Waters short reports in late 2022, a reported Argentine government investigation in 2023, a New York IPO-disclosure class action that was dismissed and whose dismissal was upheld on appeal in April 2026, and a separate federal securities case in the Eastern District of New York that is still live.
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.
Carat from Fiserv is an enterprise-grade global commerce platform that orchestrates omnichannel payments, data intelligence, and customer experience solutions for the world's largest businesses, but hampered by opaque pricing, complex contracting, and a widespread customer service reputation that does not match its technological ambitions.
Truist Merchant Services is the card-acceptance arm of Truist Bank, the Charlotte, North Carolina bank formed in December 2019 by the merger of BB&T and SunTrust. Unlike most bank programmes, which refer merchants to Fiserv or another processor, Truist Bank is itself the counterparty on the merchant agreement: it bought out its former joint venture, SunTrust Merchant Services, LLC, in 2022 for $175 million and now runs the book directly, and in mid-2025 it began rolling out Truist Merchant Engage, a Pollinate-built dashboard that puts merchant services inside the bank's business-banking experience. The pitch is next-business-day funding into a Truist business checking account, in-house consultants rather than agents, and statement credits for balances of $25,000 or more. The price of that convenience is a contract written for the bank: no published rates, a three-year initial term with one-year auto-renewals, a $500 early-termination fee per merchant account ($250 in a renewal term), and the right to demand a reserve on seven days' notice. It is a reasonable option for a Truist business customer who negotiates; it is not one to sign without reading the Merchant Program Guide.
Bank of America Merchant Services is a large, bank-integrated payment processing solution ideal for existing BofA business checking customers who value brand stability, seamless funding, and broad payment acceptance though it lags behind fintech competitors on pricing transparency, modern integrations, and third-party review scores.
A capable global orchestration platform — published card rates in a handful of countries, local acquiring in 50 more, one integration for over 200 regions — carrying a 2024 FTC settlement for processing payments for a known scam, and now owned by Payroc.
One of the largest privately held US acquirers, rebranded from North American Bancard in 2024 — a rebrand that also reset its public review record. It publishes POS rates and says it does not require a long-term contract, but reviewers who have read its traditional merchant agreement report a three-year term with a liquidated-damages termination clause.
PNC Merchant Services is the card-acceptance arm of PNC Bank, and PNC describes it on its own site as an alliance between the bank and Fiserv — PNC owns the customer relationship and support, Fiserv provides the processing and the Clover hardware. It publishes flat rates, which most bank programmes do not: 2.60% plus $0.10 for a swiped, dipped or tapped card and 3.45% plus $0.15 for online, telephone or manually keyed transactions, with next-business-day funding on Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express when the money lands in a qualifying PNC business checking account. What it does not publish is the rest of the agreement — the monthly and annual account fees, the term length, and the liquidated-damages provision that applies if you leave early. That gap is not academic: in November 2021 PNC Merchant Services agreed to a settlement of up to $14.5 million to resolve two class actions brought by merchants over annual fees, early-termination fees and paper statement fees.
One of the largest acquirers in the world, bought by Global Payments in January 2026 and now being folded into that brand. Enormous reach, but small merchants still get a three-year contract, an auto-renewal clause and pricing that is never published.
The terminal company that became a payments company. Verifone has been making card-reading hardware since 1981 and is the device behind a very large share of the world's checkout counters, but the merchant-facing business it has assembled around that hardware — Verifone Payments acquiring, plus the 2Checkout platform it bought in 2020 — is a much weaker story. Its US BBB profile carries an F for failing to answer complaints, its own .com Trustpilot page sits at 1.5 out of 5, and no acquiring rate is published anywhere. The only prices Verifone publishes are 2Checkout's, and those are merchant-of-record rates for selling software, not merchant-account rates.
Wells Fargo Merchant Services is a division of one of the largest U.S. banks, offering credit and debit card processing, Clover POS systems, and e-commerce solutions to small and medium-sized businesses.
Global Payments Inc. is a Fortune 500 payments technology behemoth, processing trillions of dollars annually across 38 countries, offering massive scale and enterprise capabilities, but consistently criticized by small and mid-size merchants for opaque pricing, hidden fees, rigid contracts, poor customer support, and a significant history of legal actions.
Paysafe is a global payments technology platform that provides merchants and consumers with payment processing, digital wallet services, alternative payment methods, and secure transaction infrastructure.
Elavon is one of the world's largest payment processors, serving over 2 million merchant locations across 36 countries offering a comprehensive suite of enterprise payment solutions, but widely criticized by small and mid-size merchants.