Buckaroo Review

Buckaroo is a Dutch payment service provider based in Utrecht, which says it was founded in 2005. It is majority-owned by the French private equity firm Keensight Capital, which agreed to buy its stake in December 2021. It is licensed by De Nederlandsche Bank as a payment institution and sells online payments, card terminals and Tap to Pay on Android to businesses in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. The merchant contract is with Buckaroo itself. Depending on the payment method, Buckaroo acts as the acquirer, as a processor for another acquirer, or as a payment facilitator signing cards up as the acquirer's agent. Customer money is held by a separate foundation, Stichting Derdengelden Buckaroo. Prices are published and exclude VAT. As of October 2026, online iDEAL by Wero costs €0.30 per payment, or less in a monthly bundle from €4.99. EU consumer cards online start at 1.80% + €0.25. In store, on the Dutch tariff, a domestic debit card payment costs €0.12, or €0.063 to €0.095 in a monthly bundle. Terminals cost €169 to €490 to buy or €19.65 to €44.50 a month to lease. Online payouts are weekly by default and terminal takings are paid out every working day. Buckaroo says it serves more than 55,000 businesses. As of 26 October 2026 its Trustpilot score is 2.8, with recent complaints about locked accounts and slow support. The terms favour Buckaroo: it can charge the rest of the first year's subscription fees if you leave early, hold a rolling reserve at its discretion, and raise prices once a year.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Buckaroo’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What Buckaroo is

Buckaroo is a payment service provider based on Zonnebaan in Utrecht, with offices in The Hague, Diegem in Belgium and Luxembourg, and a development hub in Pristina, Kosovo. It sells online payments, card terminals and Tap to Pay to businesses ranging from small retailers to large Dutch brands. It also offers credit management, subscription billing, accounting sync and, since 2026, financing. As of September 2026, Buckaroo says it serves more than 55,000 business customers and processes more than one billion transactions a year. Those are the company's own figures. Its January 2026 press release gave 47,000 customers and its March and July releases gave 54,000.

Buckaroo, Keensight and BlackFin all give 2005 as the founding year. The name is older: archived copies of buckaroo.nl show a Buckaroo online payment service with a 2002 copyright notice by early 2004, and in 2005 the site said it had been owned since mid-2004 by Ingenium Groep, an investment company. Because of that conflict we do not state a founding year as fact. Intrum Justitia, the Swedish credit management group, bought it in January 2012 and sold it to the French private equity firm BlackFin Capital Partners in 2017, when Intrum said it had about 60 employees and more than 4,500 merchants. In December 2021 Keensight Capital, another French private equity firm, agreed to buy BlackFin's majority stake alongside the management team, subject to approval from De Nederlandsche Bank. Buckaroo's own press releases now say it is owned by Keensight. Buckaroo agreed to buy the Dutch payment provider Sisow in December 2020 and completed the deal in March 2021 after DNB approval (its About page dates it 2020), and it bought SEPAY, a terminal specialist in The Hague, in 2022. In 2024 it agreed with ABN AMRO to take over the bank's card-terminal transactions in phases. In January 2026 it took over Payconiq's direct merchant portfolio in Luxembourg, ahead of the switch to Wero. Tamás Fogl, who had taken over Pinlinq and built it into the business that became SEPAY, and who was Buckaroo's chief operating officer from 2022, became CEO on 1 July 2026. Paul Scholten, CEO since before the 2021 deal, stays on the management board.

Why we list Buckaroo as a payment facilitator

Buckaroo B.V. is on De Nederlandsche Bank's register as a payment institution (relation number F0003), authorised for services including acquiring, direct debits, credit transfers, payment initiation and account information. Its trade names include Sepay by Buckaroo and Sisow. The merchant agreement is always with Buckaroo. Its general terms describe three roles. It acts as collector or acquirer when money flows through its third-party funds account, and as a processor when the acquirer pays the merchant directly. It acts as a payment facilitator when money flows through that account and Buckaroo acts as an acquirer's agent. The payment method terms say that in the facilitator role a merchant needs no separate contract with an acquirer, and they give contact details for Worldpay and American Express as the acquirers. Buckaroo is also an iDEAL acquirer, and it says SEPAY's principal membership of Visa and Mastercard gave it its own acquiring licence. The terminal terms, by contrast, describe Buckaroo as an intermediary for in-store Visa and Mastercard payments, with the acquirer crediting the merchant. Because a typical small or mid-size merchant signs only with Buckaroo, which onboards it, sets the price, holds the funds and pays out, the payment facilitator category fits best. Larger merchants can instead use Buckaroo as a gateway on top of their own EMS or Worldline contract.

What it costs online

Buckaroo publishes a full online price list. It says prices are per transaction, percentages are calculated on the gross amount, prices exclude VAT and are subject to acceptance. The main prices as of October 2026 are below.

• iDEAL by Wero: €0.30, or €0.199 to €0.249 inside a monthly bundle of 20, 50 or 100 payments costing €4.99, €11.99 or €19.99. Payments beyond the bundle cost €0.30. iDEAL QR costs €0.30 + €0.05.
• Wero: €0.30 in the Netherlands, €0.40 in Belgium, and €0.25 + 1.20% in Luxembourg and Germany.
• Bancontact: €0.40. KBC/CBC: €0.25 + 0.90%. Belfius: €0.28 + 0.95%.
• Cards: EU consumer credit cards €0.25 + from 1.80%, EU consumer debit cards €0.25 + from 1.20%, business and non-EU cards €0.25 + 2.80%, American Express €0.25 + 2.90%. Apple Pay and Google Pay are priced by the card in the wallet.
• PayPal: €0.50 + 3.50%, plus PayPal's own charges. Klarna: €0.45 + 2.99% in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Finland, and higher elsewhere. Riverty: €1.02 + 3.05%. in3: €1.02 + 3.99%. Billink: €0.28 + 2.21%.
• Trustly €0.57 + 2.36%, Pay by Bank €0.28, SEPA credit transfer €0.25. SEPA Direct Debit is priced on request.
• Extras: single-transaction payouts €0.02 each, test transactions €0.03 after the first 100, voucher refunds €0.25. Card, Apple Pay and Trustly refunds are priced differently, and charities get different rates.

The 'from' on card prices means the rate you get is set when you are accepted. Buckaroo asks merchants expecting more than €100,000 a year in volume, or more than €25,000 a year in cards, PayPal or buy now, pay later, to say so. Card merchants contracted directly through Buckaroo can ask for Interchange++ billing, where Buckaroo charges a provisional amount and corrects it once actual interchange and scheme fees are known. As an illustration, a webshop taking 300 iDEAL by Wero payments and 100 EU consumer credit card payments averaging €60 a month would pay about €19.99 + 200 × €0.30 = €79.99 for iDEAL with the 100 bundle, and 100 × (€0.25 + 1.80% of €60) = €133 for cards at the lowest listed rate, before VAT.

What it costs in store

As of October 2026, on the Dutch tariff, a domestic consumer debit card payment costs €0.12 without a bundle. Monthly bundles bring that down: 50 payments for €4.75, 150 for €13.50, 250 for €21.25, 500 for €40.50, 1,000 for €71 and 2,000 for €126, with payments beyond the bundle charged at the bundle rate of €0.095 down to €0.063. Bundles apply only to Dutch consumer debit cards. Foreign consumer debit cards and EU consumer Visa and Mastercard cost 1.35%, as does consumer Bancontact. Business cards and non-EU consumer cards cost 2.30%. American Express costs 1.35% below €100,000 of turnover and 2.30% above it. A refund costs €0.12, a Visa or Mastercard chargeback €50 and an American Express chargeback €0.25. The PCI compliance fee is €0.95 a month and a '7-day Payout' option €2.70 a month. The Belgian tariff is different: a domestic Bancontact consumer payment costs €0.14 without a bundle, bundles run from €6.00 for 50 to €170 for 2,000 (€0.120 down to €0.085 a payment), a business Bancontact payment costs €0.37 and a refund €0.16. The card percentages, chargeback fees, PCI fee and 7-day Payout fee are the same. The POS terms warn that debit prices depend on the average transaction value and the card's home country. If either differs from what you said at sign-up, Buckaroo can bill different rates for up to six months back.

Terminals are bought, leased or rented. As listed in October 2026, the Buck Mini 4G costs €169 to buy or €19.65 to €26.45 a month to lease, and the Buck Mobile costs €490 or €29.50 to €44.50 a month. Buying a terminal also carries a monthly service fee of €12.85 to €20.10. Every option has a one-time €58 registration fee. Rentals run from €12 a day up to three months. Tap to Pay on an Android phone costs €3.70 a month with no registration fee, and the same transaction prices apply. A business with its own CCV-compatible terminal can buy the transaction service alone for €3.70 a month. Buckaroo's general terms say fees exclude VAT unless stated otherwise.

Payouts, reserves and chargebacks

Online balances are paid out weekly on Wednesdays by default. In the Plaza portal, merchants can pick other weekdays, every weekday, or monthly dates. Terminal takings are paid out every working day at around 10:00. Customer money is held by Stichting Derdengelden Buckaroo, a separate foundation that pays merchants on Buckaroo's instruction, and each merchant gets its own IBAN within it. The general terms let Buckaroo keep part of the balance back as a threshold against refunds and chargebacks. Buckaroo can also set a rolling reserve or ask for other security as it sees fit, and can hold back money it expects to lose to a chargeback until a chargeback can no longer be raised. A rolling reserve stays with Buckaroo after the contract ends until that risk has passed (general terms 23.6). The terminal terms also let Buckaroo ask for a deposit, to be paid within three days of the request and not released until at least nine months after the contract ends (POS terms, part C, 2.2(k)). At the merchant's own request, Buckaroo will not hold back a free balance for more than two months (13.8). Fees are deducted from the balance, and if the balance cannot cover them Buckaroo collects by direct debit. You also take on the exchange-rate risk on chargebacks of non-euro payments. Buckaroo's help pages say card chargebacks can be raised up to 180 days after purchase or delivery, and the time you have to respond ranges from 7 to 45 days depending on the acquirer.

Contract terms

Buckaroo's general terms (version 2026v1) make the agreement open-ended, with one month's notice to the first of a month. A cancellation within the first year lets Buckaroo bill the monthly subscription fees for the rest of that year. Bought terminals carry a one-year processing contract, after which it is cancellable monthly. Leases run one, three or five years and then renew monthly, and ending either early costs a buyout based on the remaining payments. Buckaroo can change recurring fees once a calendar year on a month's notice, though not in the first six months unless your volume or mix differs from what you declared, and you may cancel within 14 days of that notice. It can also pass on cost increases from card schemes and acquirers at any time, and the terms give no matching right to cancel over those. Buckaroo can suspend payouts or end the contract immediately on grounds that include a change in your risk profile, too many chargebacks, suspected fraud, or card volume above €1 million a year per card scheme while it acts as payment facilitator. It can also end the contract without notice if you process nothing for six months. Its liability is capped at the fees charged in the six months before the event. The terms also exclude the Dutch implementation of the PSD2 directive between the parties. Dutch law applies and disputes go to the court in Utrecht.

Reputation and complaints

As of 26 October 2026, Buckaroo's Trustpilot profile, claimed since 2017, shows a TrustScore of 2.8 from 832 reviews. The star distribution is more favourable than the score: 52% of reviews are five-star and 24% are one-star. Trustpilot weights recent reviews, and the recent ones are mostly negative. Three one-star reviews posted in 2026 describe a locked account with no reply to emails or calls, an unresponsive company after a service takeover, and poor support for a terminal that did not work. Trustpilot notes that Buckaroo has not invited reviews recently, and Buckaroo replied to 62% of negative reviews. The reviewers are a mix of merchants and consumers who saw a Buckaroo charge, so the profile is a rough guide to merchant experience. Our searches of De Nederlandsche Bank's enforcement publications, Dutch case law and news coverage found no fine, enforcement measure or lawsuit naming Buckaroo.

Who should use Buckaroo

Buckaroo suits a Dutch or Belgian business that takes mostly iDEAL by Wero, Bancontact and domestic debit card payments, and wants a webshop and shop counter on one local, licensed provider with prices it can check before signing. Its add-ons, from dunning to accounting sync, make most sense for subscription businesses and firms that invoice. A business that takes many international or business card payments online should compare the 2.80% + €0.25 rate carefully. A business that may switch provider within a year should read the first-year fee clause, and a business that cannot afford a frozen payout should ask in writing how rolling reserves are set. Lease a terminal for longer than a year only if you are confident you will keep it, because leaving early costs the remaining payments.