A long-established California high-risk specialist with an A+ BBB rating, accreditation since 2012 and an unusually light complaint record. The trade-offs are tiered, quote-only pricing at the expensive end of the market and multi-year contracts with early termination fees up to $595.
Tell them what you need. This goes to eMerchantBroker only.
Merchants in verticals banks decline — CBD and nutraceuticals, adult, credit repair, firearms, vape, gaming, tech support, travel, continuity billing — who need an account approved in days and value a provider with a decade-plus track record over the cheapest quote.
eMerchantBroker has been underwriting declined verticals since 2011 and has the public record to show for it — A+ with the BBB, accredited since April 2012, and very few complaints for a sector where held funds and sudden terminations are routine. It approves fast and it accepts categories most processors will not touch. The cost of that is real: pricing is tiered and quoted only after you apply, third-party reviewers put effective rates in the 3% to 4% range plus 15 to 25 cents, and contracts run one to three years with early termination fees reported between $295 and $595.
You are a low-risk retailer, restaurant or standard ecommerce store. You will pay a high-risk premium for exposure you do not carry. Skip it too if you need interchange-plus pricing you can audit line by line — eMerchantBroker's default is tiered, which is the least transparent structure in the industry.
The headline take, the audiences it's right (and wrong) for, and the genuine differentiators behind the verdict.
A long-established California high-risk specialist with an A+ BBB rating, accreditation since 2012 and an unusually light complaint record. The trade-offs are tiered, quote-only pricing at the expensive end of the market and multi-year contracts with early termination fees up to $595.
Longevity and complaint record. Most of the high-risk field is resellers with short histories and long complaint files. eMerchantBroker has been accredited since 2012, runs its own gateway alongside third-party options, and pairs the merchant account with chargeback prevention and funding — a package rather than a placement.
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 eMerchantBroker’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.
eMerchantBroker.com LLC has been placing merchant accounts since 2011 — its BBB profile records the business as started in February of that year — and operates from Thousand Oaks, California, with an additional office in London. It exists for businesses banks decline: gambling and gaming, adult, CBD and nutraceuticals, vaping, credit repair, firearms, tech support, travel, continuity billing and a long tail of similar categories. Blair Thomas is a co-founder, and the company is reported to have made the Inc. 500 list of fast-growing US companies in 2016.
In this sector, longevity is the finding that matters most. The high-risk category attracts brokers who advertise into it without the acquiring relationships to support it, take an application fee, and disappear. eMerchantBroker has held BBB accreditation continuously since April 2012, carries an A+ rating, and has a complaint file that is genuinely light for a business of its age and vertical mix. That is not a guarantee of anything, but it is the opposite of the usual pattern.
The company advertises a 99% approval rate and says many merchants are approved within 24 to 48 hours of a complete application. Treat the 99% as marketing — it is unverifiable and every approval is still subject to underwriting — but the speed claim is consistent with what merchants report, and speed is usually why someone is shopping here in the first place. The typical eMerchantBroker customer has just had an account closed without warning.
The pricing is the weak part. eMerchantBroker quotes only after an application and reviewers describe the default structure as tiered — the arrangement where transactions are sorted into qualified, mid-qualified and non-qualified buckets whose definitions you cannot audit and whose composition you cannot predict. Reported effective rates sit around 3% to 4% plus 15 to 25 cents, which is the expensive end even for high-risk. Interchange-plus is worth asking for explicitly; sources disagree on whether it is routinely offered.
Contracts are reported at one to three years with automatic renewal, and early termination fees between $295 and $595 depending on the term. None of that appears on the website. In high-risk this matters more than usual, because your account is placed with an acquiring bank whose appetite can change: a vertical that is welcome this year can be repriced or exited next year, and you want to know what leaving costs before that happens rather than after.
The other unpublished term is the reserve. High-risk acquirers routinely hold back a percentage of settlements against future chargebacks, and a rolling reserve is a cash-flow event, not a fee — it can matter far more to a growing business than the difference between 3.4% and 3.7%.
What complaints exist cluster on the application rather than the account: heavy documentation demands, declines without a clear explanation, and slow responses when a case is complex. Support is advertised as 24/7 and reviewers rate it well on ordinary questions. eMerchantBroker's Trustpilot listing is too thin to draw anything from, so the BBB file is effectively the only third-party record of size — worth keeping in mind when weighing any high-risk provider's reputation, including this one.
If you are a standard low-risk business, this is the wrong shop and the rate will tell you so. High-risk providers price for exposure they are underwriting, and a normal retailer or restaurant will pay for risk it does not carry. Go to a mainstream processor with published rates instead. eMerchantBroker earns its place when the mainstream processors have already said no.
Card-not-present, e-commerce, and online payments
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
Required commitment period
Reported at one to three years depending on the underwriting bank, commonly with an automatic renewal clause
How to terminate your account
Not published. Third-party reviewers report early termination fees of $295 to $595 depending on term length, with auto-renewal standard. Ask which acquiring bank your account sits with, what the initial term is, how much notice is required to avoid renewal, and the exact termination fee — high-risk accounts are placed with different banks and the terms follow the bank, not the brand on the website.
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.
Card acquiring for verticals mainstream processors decline, including gambling and gaming, adult, CBD and nutraceuticals, vaping, credit repair, firearms, tech support, travel, weight loss, e-books, software and telecommunications. The company advertises a 99% approval rate for low- and high-risk applicants.
A proprietary gateway offered at no monthly charge, with third-party alternatives — Authorize.Net, NMI, eProcessing Network and 1stPay — available for merchants who need a specific integration.
Alert and dispute-management services sold alongside the merchant account. For high-risk merchants this matters more than the discount rate: exceeding card-network chargeback thresholds is what ends an account.
Bank-debit acceptance offered alongside cards, useful for recurring billing where card costs are elevated by risk pricing.
ACH business funding and cash advance products underwritten against processing history, with funding quoted at five to seven days.
It does not publish rates. Pricing is quoted after an application and depends on your industry, volume, ticket size and chargeback history. Third-party reviewers report effective rates around 3% to 4% plus 15 to 25 cents per transaction, on a tiered structure. Ask for the full schedule — discount rate by tier, per-transaction fee, monthly minimum, gateway fee, PCI charge and chargeback fee — rather than a single headline number, and ask whether interchange-plus is available for your account.
We evaluate every payment processor independently — Payment Review does not accept paid placement. Our analysis combines hands-on product testing where possible, public pricing and policy documents, third-party reviews from BBB, Trustpilot, Google, and G2, and employee feedback from sites like Glassdoor and Indeed. We update reviews on a rolling cadence and flag the next review date so readers know how fresh the analysis is.
Suggest a correction. Our editorial team reviews every submission and updates reviews on a rolling cadence.
Claim this listing with an email at your own domain to file corrections and track them. Claiming does not let you change the grade, the verdict or the ratings.
No merchant has reviewed eMerchantBroker here yet. Be the first to share your experience.