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 August 19, 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
3.5
3.5
Feature set
4.5✓wins this criterion
4.0
Ease of use
4.0
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.
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
✓Published interchange-plus pricing across three tiers
✓Approves restricted verticals at the Enterprise tier
✓Growth tier perks unlock at $100K/mo, not seven figures
✓Proactive chargeback monitoring
✕No card-present discount on the Starter tier
✕Multi-year agreements and rolling reserves are standard
✕Support follow-up can be inconsistent
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
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.
✕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