An Austin high-risk specialist that publishes flat rates — 2.69% + $0.36 online, 1.59% + $0.19 swiped — and routes merchants across 30+ banking partners so one declined account does not stop the business. Its own marketing overstates its Trustpilot score, and its BBB rating is D- for unanswered complaints.
Tell them what you need. This goes to Easy Pay Direct only.
Established online businesses in verticals banks decline — coaching and info-products, supplements, CBD, firearms, travel, subscription and continuity billing, high-ticket sales — that have been shut down by an aggregator and want a dedicated merchant account with a named underwriter and a fallback bank.
Easy Pay Direct sells stability rather than price. It underwrites each application by hand, places the account with one of a stated 30-plus banking partners that works with your vertical, and encourages high-volume merchants to run more than one merchant account so a single shutdown does not take the business offline. Unusually for a high-risk provider, it publishes rates: 2.69% + $0.36 online, 1.59% + $0.19 swiped, 1% + $0.29 for ACH, a $99 setup fee waived on fast document submission and a monthly fee it describes as typically $25. There is no long-term contract and no early termination fee on a standard account. Two things temper that. Its pricing page advertises 'Rated 4.8 / 5 on Trustpilot' when the actual Trustpilot profile shows 3.8 from 48 reviews. And its BBB rating is D-, assigned specifically for failing to respond to two complaints.
You are a low-risk business processing modest volume. At 2.69% + $0.36 online plus $25 a month you will pay more than a mainstream interchange-plus processor charges, and the multi-bank routing you are paying for solves a problem you do not have. Skip it too if a rolling reserve would break your cash flow — Easy Pay Direct states some high-risk accounts carry one on a six-month cycle.
The headline take, the audiences it's right (and wrong) for, and the genuine differentiators behind the verdict.
An Austin high-risk specialist that publishes flat rates — 2.69% + $0.36 online, 1.59% + $0.19 swiped — and routes merchants across 30+ banking partners so one declined account does not stop the business. Its own marketing overstates its Trustpilot score, and its BBB rating is D- for unanswered complaints.
Publishing a rate card at all. Most high-risk providers answer every pricing question with 'apply and we will quote you', which makes comparison impossible. Easy Pay Direct posts standard-account rates and tells you upfront which of its banks fit your file and which do not.
Real-world cost at three volumes, plus the rates, fees, payouts, and contract terms that drive them.
Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Easy Pay Direct’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.
Easy Pay Direct operates out of Austin, Texas. Its BBB record gives the business start and incorporation date as 22 January 2007, under the alternate name Element Merchant Services LLC, and lists founder Brad Weimert as its principal. Third-party databases give founding years ranging from 2006 to 2009; the incorporation date on the BBB file is the firmest figure we could source. It is not a processor. It is a placement and gateway business: it underwrites your application, decides which of a stated 30-plus acquiring banks will take your vertical, and puts you there with its own gateway on top.
That structure is the whole product. An aggregator like Stripe or Square onboards in minutes because you are one of thousands inside a shared merchant ID, and the risk review happens after money is already moving — which is why shutdowns arrive without warning and with a balance attached. Easy Pay Direct gives you a dedicated merchant account in your own business name, underwritten by a human before you process anything, and for larger merchants it will run several accounts at different banks with transactions routed across them, so a single bank pulling out does not stop the business.
Standard published pricing is 2.69% + $0.36 online, 1.59% + $0.19 swiped, and 1% + $0.29 for ACH and eCheck. Setup is $99, waived if underwriting documents land within 24 hours, and the monthly fee is described as 'typically $25' covering gateway, reporting and PCI tools. Interchange-plus is offered to merchants processing roughly $50,000 a month and up. There is no long-term contract and no early termination fee on a standard account.
Publishing any of this is genuinely unusual in high-risk processing, where the standard answer to a pricing question is a quote form. It is also worth reading carefully: the published card describes a standard account, and high-risk accounts are priced individually by the bank that takes them. The rate you are quoted is the rate that matters.
For a low-risk business, this is expensive. 2.69% + $0.36 plus $25 a month is materially more than a mainstream interchange-plus processor charges, and the redundancy you are paying for addresses a risk you do not carry. The pricing page argues the comparison the other way — that a payfac's advertised 2.9% + $0.30 runs above 4% once surcharges are counted, citing one client at 4.54% who saved over $75,000 in a year. That is the company's own single example, unaudited; treat it as an illustration of the argument, not as a benchmark.
The pricing page states 'Rated 4.8 / 5 on Trustpilot'. The Trustpilot profile for easypaydirect.com shows 3.8 out of 5 across 48 reviews, on a profile the company has claimed since June 2022. We could not find any Trustpilot listing showing 4.8; third-party reviewers have reported a 4.8 rating for the company's Google Maps listing, but we cannot confirm that is the source of the number. Either way, the claim on the page does not match the platform it names — and for a company whose pitch is that other processors mislead you about numbers, that is an awkward thing to leave standing.
The BBB rating is D-, and the BBB states the reason plainly: failure to respond to two complaints filed against the business. That is a narrower failing than a pattern of upheld complaints — the company has a light complaint history for its size — but it is a company declining to answer a public process, and it is the opposite of the responsiveness the marketing promises. Note that several third-party sites still report an A+ or a B-; those are stale.
The scale claims are also inconsistent with each other. The high-risk page carries '13+ Years' next to '100K+ Businesses' and '$12B+ Processed'; the About page says 'two decades, 100,000+ businesses'; the pricing page says '30K+ Businesses'. Incorporation records put the company at 19 years. None of these are audited, and we would not lean on any of them.
Because the acquiring bank is chosen for you, the terms that decide whether this works are the ones the published card does not cover. Reserves are the big one: Easy Pay Direct describes six-month rolling reserves, holding funds at least 180 days, as a normal structure for some high-risk accounts. Payout timing and the per-chargeback fee are likewise set by the bank rather than published.
Card-not-present, e-commerce, and online payments
Card-present retail and point-of-sale transactions
Manually entered card-not-present transactions
Recurring monthly account fee
Annual PCI DSS compliance and security fee
Per-incident chargeback dispute fee
Fee for canceling before contract end
Regular deposit schedule to your bank account
Minimum balance required before payout
Required commitment period
No long-term contract on a standard account
How to terminate your account
Standard accounts can be closed without an early termination fee. Custom-quoted accounts for very high-volume merchants may include negotiated terms, which the company states are always disclosed in writing before the account is placed.
Estimate your monthly costs
Pick a published plan, enter your volume and transaction profile, and we’ll compute the math the same way an underwriter would. Real costs vary with card mix, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.
Flat all-in rate (interchange built in)
Products, integrations, payment-type coverage, security posture, and how their support holds up in practice.
A merchant account in your own business name, underwritten individually and placed with one of a stated 30-plus banking partners that supports your vertical. The company lists CBD and hemp, nutraceuticals, firearms, vape and tobacco, credit repair, debt collection, coaching and seminars, info-products, subscription billing, travel and MOTO among the categories it underwrites.
The company's own gateway, with a stated 500-plus integrations to carts and CRMs, recurring billing with automated retries and dunning, email invoicing with a pay-now link, and a virtual terminal.
Distributes transactions across several merchant accounts at different banks. The stated purpose is redundancy: if one account is frozen or capped, the others keep processing. The company recommends it for merchants above $250,000 a year or those funding payroll and ad spend out of card receipts.
Direct bank debit at a published rate, positioned for high-ticket and B2B transactions where card rates are punitive.
Early dispute alerts intended to resolve a transaction before it becomes a chargeback, plus a dispute response workflow handled with the merchant.
Its published standard rates are 2.69% + $0.36 per online transaction, 1.59% + $0.19 per swiped transaction and 1% + $0.29 for ACH and eCheck. The setup fee is $99, waived if underwriting documents are submitted within 24 hours, and the monthly fee is described as typically $25. Interchange-plus pricing is quoted individually to merchants above roughly $50,000 a month. Because high-risk accounts are underwritten one at a time, treat the published card as a starting point and get your own numbers in writing.
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