A well-run high-risk merchant services shop with unusually good service ratings and no junk fees — but since its 2024 acquisition it is a Kurv company, and Kurv now routes almost everything through its own platform, which is not the bank-agnostic brokerage the brand's reputation was built on.
PayKings holds the higher standing — by grade, then mean category score. The row-by-row picture below is what should actually decide it for your business.
Both graded against the same six criteria. How we grade · Last fact-checked September 7, 2026 and August 22, 2026.
The six criteria
PayKings and Payment Cloud scored out of 5 on each of the six review criteria.
Criterion
PayKings
Payment Cloud
Pricing transparency
4.5✓wins this criterion
3.5
Feature set
4.5✓wins this criterion
4.0
Ease of use
4.0
Published facts
Straight from each provider's published documentation. Where a number isn't published, we say so rather than estimate.
Published rates, fees and terms for PayKings and Payment Cloud.
Metric
PayKings
Payment Cloud
Online rate
IC + 1.10% + 25c, or IC + 0.80% + 10c above $100K/mo.
Estimated: 2.5% – 3.5% + $0.20–$0.30 for low-risk e-commerce; 3.5% – 5.0% + $0.30 for high-risk e-commerce.
Monthly fee
$13 (waived on Growth).
Typically $0 – $25/month
Payout
T+2, or next-day above $100K/mo.
Not disclosed
Contract
No long-term contracts.
Not disclosed
In-person rate
The same published markups apply in person — there is no card-present discount on the Starter tier.
Estimated: 2.2% – 2.7% + $0.10 for low-risk retail; 2.7% – 3.5% + $0.10–$0.20 for high-risk card-present.
Keyed rate
Same published markups; PayKings does not price by entry mode.
How our reviewers frame this matchup
From the PayKings review
PaymentCloud is a high-risk agent/reseller that shops your application across a network of banks, with no setup fees and often month-to-month contracts — but pricing is quote-only, while PayKings publishes its interchange-plus tiers upfront.
Pick Payment Cloud if you You have been declined by multiple processors and want a concierge to place you across multiple banks, or you value month-to-month terms with no cancellation fee over published rates.
Who each one is for
PayKings
Ideal for
Mid-volume merchants ($100K+/mo) who want IC + markup with a dedicated rep
Merchants graduating from Stripe / Square who need real account management
Businesses that want published interchange-plus pricing as a negotiation anchor before talking to specialty acquirers
Not recommended for
Low-volume merchants under $25K/mo — flat-rate competitors (Square, Stripe) will likely cost less than IC + 1.10%
High card-present-volume retailers — Helcim's ~0.20% CP markup is meaningfully cheaper than PayKings's flat 1.10% Starter markup on the same swipe
Brand-new businesses in unrestricted verticals — flat-rate predictability is easier to forecast in early months
Merchants who refuse to share processing statements during underwriting
Payment Cloud
Ideal for
High-Risk E-commerce Businesses
New or Small Businesses Denied Elsewhere
Strengths and trade-offs
PayKings
✓Publishes interchange-plus pricing across three tiers on its own site — IC + 1.10% + 25c on Starter, IC + 0.80% + 10c above $100K a month — which almost no high-risk specialist does.
✓Publishes settlement speed per tier too: T+2 on Starter, next-day on Growth, same-day where available on Enterprise.
✓Advertises no setup fees and no long-term contracts, and Merchant Maverick's July 2026 review records the same.
✓Approves restricted verticals mainstream processors decline — CBD, nutraceuticals, firearms, debt relief and around fifty others.
✕PayKings is an agent office, not a registered ISO, and its site does not say so. The merchant agreement, the reserve, the funding timetable and any termination fee come from whichever ISO your file is placed with, not from PayKings.
✕Because of that, the published rate card is PayKings' offer rather than a guaranteed contract term — the final paper is the back end's.
✕No card-present discount on the Starter tier: the same 1.10% markup applies to a swipe as to a keyed card-not-present sale, which is expensive for a retailer.
Still deciding?
The full reviews carry the pricing narratives, contract analysis and everything else behind these numbers — or let the matching funnel score the whole directory against your business.
✕Rolling reserves are normal on higher-risk files, and neither the percentage nor the release schedule is published.
Payment Cloud
✓No application, setup, gateway setup, annual, PCI or monthly-minimum fees — rare in high risk, where those fees are the business model
✓Consistently strong service ratings: 4.4 on Trustpilot across 887 reviews and 4.1 from Merchant Maverick as of March 2026, with support quality the recurring theme
✓Dedicated account managers and hands-on onboarding for document-heavy high-risk files
✓Broad integration support — Authorize.Net, NMI, Shopify, WooCommerce and the mainstream cart and gateway stack — rather than one proprietary gateway
✕No longer independent: acquired by Electronic Merchant Systems (now Kurv) in January 2024, with the announcement framing the deal around PaymentCloud "fully utilizing Kurv's infrastructure"
✕The people who built the brokerage moved into the parent: co-founder Neal Hoffman is Kurv's chief marketing officer, and founder Shawn Silver was Kurv's chief revenue officer before leaving during 2024 to run Payment Nerds, a Kurv-backed venture that processes through Kurv. Either way, the brokerage is not being run by the people whose reputation you are buying.
✕Kurv routes almost all PaymentCloud business through its own platform, so the multi-bank shopping that built the brand's reputation is effectively gone — ask which processor and sponsor bank your file is placed with, and what happens if that bank later exits your category
✕No publicly disclosed pricing — every rate is a custom quote, and the estimates circulating online are estimates