Compared side by side on published facts and the same six criteria every review is graded on — generated from the live directory, not a sales page.
B+
Payment Cloud
Agent Office / Reseller · 3.9/5 mean
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.
Zen Payments is known for quick setup of merchant accounts and accepting businesses that mainstream providers turn away. Businesses should familiarize themselves with the terms of their contract to avoid disruptions.
Zen Payments 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 22, 2026 and September 7, 2026.
The six criteria
Payment Cloud and Zen Payments scored out of 5 on each of the six review criteria.
Criterion
Payment Cloud
Zen Payments
Pricing transparency
3.5✓wins this criterion
2.5
Feature set
4.0
4.5✓wins this criterion
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 Payment Cloud and Zen Payments.
Metric
Payment Cloud
Zen Payments
Online rate
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.
From 2.9% + $0.10, quoted rather than published.
Monthly fee
Typically $0 – $25/month
$29.
Payout
Not disclosed
About 1 business day.
Contract
Not disclosed
Not disclosed
In-person rate
Estimated: 2.2% – 2.7% + $0.10 for low-risk retail; 2.7% – 3.5% + $0.10–$0.20 for high-risk card-present.
From 2.9% + $0.20, quoted rather than published.
Keyed rate
Estimated: 2.9% – 3.5% + $0.20 for keyed-in low risk; 4% – 5% + $0.30 for keyed high-risk.
How our reviewers frame this matchup
From the Payment Cloud review
Zen Payments maintains 15+ bank relationships, so a declined file can be re-placed rather than dead, and offers same-day funding for qualifying volume — meaningful advantages now that PaymentCloud routes almost all business through parent Kurv's own platform. PaymentCloud still holds up for merchants who value its no-junk-fee structure, dedicated account managers, and hands-on onboarding for document-heavy files.
Pick Zen Payments if you want your high-risk file shopped across multiple banks with same-day funding
Who each one is for
Payment Cloud
Ideal for
High-Risk E-commerce Businesses
New or Small Businesses Denied Elsewhere
Merchants Needing Personalized, High-Touch Service
✓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.
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.
✕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
Zen Payments
✓Approves high-risk industries most processors turn away, across roughly 25 restricted verticals.
✓Same-day funding at no extra cost for merchants with qualifying volume, against next-day or two-day settlement elsewhere; standard settlement is about one business day.
✓Fifteen-plus bank and processor relationships mean a declined file can be re-placed rather than dead.
✓Same-day approval decisions with manual underwriting, which is what a merchant who has just been dropped actually needs.
✕Zen publishes no pricing. There is no rate card on its site, none in its 232-page sitemap and none the Wayback Machine has ever archived — the figures in this review are starting rates it quotes, not published ones.
✕Its BBB customer reviews average 2.15 out of 5 across 13, against 4.9 on Trustpilot — and the BBB complaints are specifically about cost, describing junk fees at twice the national average and unusually high monthly charges.
✕19 BBB complaints in three years, 6 of them closed in the last twelve months, for a company of 11 to 50 people.
✕No published contract length, notice period or termination fee, and Zen's own site acknowledges that ending a merchant account may mean paying one.