Electronic Payments Review

Electronic Payments, Inc. — usually EPI — is a Calverton, New York merchant acquirer founded on 20 May 2000 by Michael Nardy while he was a student at Boston College. It is one of the few mid-sized US acquirers that runs its own stack rather than reselling somebody else's: Cygma, launched in 2023, is EPI's own authorization and clearing platform, and Exatouch, ProCharge, eGiftSolutions and the Vault gateway are in-house products. The company says it processes more than $26.5 billion a year across 60,000+ merchant partnerships and 486 million transactions, and calls itself the 23rd largest US acquirer. It bought UK-based Handpoint in August 2025, adding roughly 100 ISV integrations, 18,000 connected devices and more than $2 billion of annual volume plus reach into Canada, the UK and over 20 EEA markets. Its BBB file is unusually clean — A+, accredited since 2010, four complaints in three years. It publishes no pricing whatsoever.

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

What Electronic Payments is

Electronic Payments, Inc. — EPI — is a US merchant acquirer founded on 20 May 2000 by Michael Nardy, then a student at Boston College, with classmate Matthew Findlan joining as COO. It has stayed privately held under Nardy for 26 years, which in payments is close to unheard of. Its BBB profile records the business as started in May 2000, incorporated in January 2004, and headquartered at 1161 Scott Avenue, Calverton, New York; EPI's own contact page now lists only its Boca Raton, Florida office. Both are real, and the company has not said which is now the corporate seat.

By its own current figures EPI processes more than $26.5 billion a year across 486 million-plus transactions and 60,000+ merchant partnerships, and describes itself as the 23rd largest US acquirer. It is a registered independent sales organisation of Citizens Bank N.A., KeyBank N.A. and Commercial Bank of California, all three named on its own site.

It owns its own rails

The most consequential fact about EPI is that it is not a reseller. In 2023 it launched Cygma, its own authorization and clearing platform. Most acquirers this size ride on Fiserv, TSYS or Elavon, which means a merchant with a settlement problem is two or three companies away from anyone who can actually fix it. EPI controls that layer itself, alongside an in-house product line built up over two decades: Exatouch POS (acquired 2015), ProCharge (2013), eGiftSolutions (2007) and the Vault gateway. It also resells Clover hardware.

In August 2025 EPI acquired Handpoint, a UK-based integrated and mobile payments company, bringing roughly 100 ISV integrations, 18,000 connected devices and more than $2 billion in annual payment volume, plus reach into Canada, the United Kingdom and over 20 EEA markets. An in-house clearing platform paired with a developer-facing embedded payments stack is a combination normally only available from much larger companies, and it is a coherent strategy rather than an acquisition for volume.

The complaint record is genuinely good

The Better Business Bureau rates EPI A+ and has accredited it since 12 March 2010. Four complaints in the last three years, none closed in the last twelve months. For a merchant acquirer serving tens of thousands of businesses through an agent channel, that is a very thin file — comparable ISOs of this size routinely carry dozens, sometimes hundreds. EPI also answers the complaints it does receive with dates, figures and specifics rather than boilerplate, which is a small but real signal about how a dispute is likely to be handled.

The complaints that are published cluster tightly: cancellation, equipment return, residual balances and collections. That is the exit path, not the day-to-day. It is worth knowing, because it tells you which part of the relationship to paper carefully.

The pricing problem

EPI publishes nothing about cost. No rates, no monthly fee, no chargeback fee, no PCI charge, no term length, no early termination fee. Pricing is quoted by EPI representatives or by the roughly 1,500 independent agents reselling EPI services, and varies by business type, volume, processing method and whatever contract is negotiated.

Third-party reviewers report that contracts written through EPI may include a monthly account fee, a monthly minimum, statement and PCI compliance charges and equipment lease or purchase costs, and that terms commonly run three years with automatic renewal unless cancelled in writing within a specified window, with an early termination fee on multi-year paper. None of that is confirmed by EPI. We are reporting it as attributed third-party claims rather than as fact, and the honest advice is the same either way: the number that binds you is in the document in front of you, not on anyone's website.

The agent channel is the real variable

EPI sells primarily through independent sales organisations and agents, plus partnerships with banks, software companies and referral partners. That is a normal model, and it is how the company reached its scale. It also means that most merchants' experience of EPI is mediated by whoever sold them the account, and a clean corporate BBB file does not travel down to every agent.

The practical consequence: evaluate the paperwork, not the brand. Ask who the contracting entity is, whether the agreement is EPI's or the agent's, what the term and auto-renewal window are, whether the equipment is leased or purchased, and what happens to the equipment obligation if you close the processing account early. Those four questions cover most of what has gone wrong for the merchants who did complain.

Where EPI fits

EPI is a credible mid-market acquirer with real technology, a long track record, an unusually clean complaint history and an expanding ISV story. If you want a counterparty that owns its own clearing platform and has been run by the same person since 2000, it belongs on your shortlist — particularly if you are a restaurant or retailer who would use Exatouch, or a software platform looking to embed payments.

It is graded B rather than higher for one reason: a merchant cannot evaluate it without entering a sales process. Everything about cost and commitment is private, the contract terms most likely to hurt are the ones reported by third parties rather than published by the company, and the distribution channel means the terms you get depend heavily on who you happen to talk to. Get a written schedule, compare it against a processor that publishes its markup, and decide on the numbers rather than the reputation.