emerchantpay Review

A London-headquartered payment service provider and acquirer, founded in 2002 by its current chief executive Jonas Reynisson, that is unusual in this market for owning both halves of the stack. emerchantpay holds its own FCA authorisation as an electronic money institution (Reg. No. 900778), has been a principal member of Visa Europe and Mastercard since 2012, launched its own gateway in 2013 and its own acquiring division in 2014, and runs card-present alongside online and mobile. It underwrites verticals most acquirers decline — gaming, forex, travel, subscriptions — which makes it a genuine option for merchants who have been turned down elsewhere, without being a broker reselling somebody else's appetite for risk. The catch is the usual one: no published pricing, quotes come from sales after underwriting, and high-risk accounts should expect a rolling reserve. Its US arm is in Boca Raton, but its licensing and scheme membership are European, so establish which entity is boarding you.

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

A licence, not a referral

That sequence is the review. Most businesses marketing high-risk merchant accounts are brokers or ISOs: they take your application, place it with an acquirer, and take a margin. That model works until the acquirer changes its appetite, at which point your broker cannot help you because it was never the party carrying the risk. emerchantpay carries it. The 2002 founding date is the company's own — the UK operating entity, emerchantpay Ltd, is registered at Companies House under number 05153270 — but the licensing is checkable in a way most claims in this corner of the industry are not: the FCA registration number is 900778 and you can confirm it on the public Financial Services Register in about a minute.

That sequence is the review. Most businesses marketing high-risk merchant accounts are brokers or ISOs: they take your application, place it with an acquirer, and take a margin. That model works until the acquirer changes its appetite, at which point your broker cannot help you because it was never the party carrying the risk. emerchantpay carries it. The FCA registration number is 900778 and you can verify it on the public Financial Services Register in about a minute — which is more than can be said for most claims made in this corner of the industry.

What it will underwrite

emerchantpay works across ordinary e-commerce and retail, but the reason a merchant usually finds it is the verticals conventional acquirers decline: gaming and gambling, forex, travel, subscription businesses, debt collection. It runs an in-house risk and fraud function, which is the capability that makes underwriting those categories possible, and it has been doing it for over two decades.

Alongside that sits genuine international coverage — more than 50 payment methods, over 150 processing currencies, more than 20 settlement currencies, and Level 1 PCI DSS certification on the gateway. For a merchant selling across Europe, where local payment methods routinely outperform cards, that breadth is a separate reason to be interested, independent of risk appetite.

The reserve is the real price

There is no published pricing, which by now will not surprise anyone reading reviews in this category. Pricing is quoted after underwriting, in either interchange-plus-plus or blended form. Trade coverage of emerchantpay's gaming business reports all-in rates around 1.8% to 3.5% with an FX markup of one to two per cent — one source, unconfirmed, useful only as a sense of the range.

But for a high-risk merchant the processing rate is rarely the number that decides anything. The rolling reserve is. emerchantpay's own glossary sets out the mechanism plainly: a pre-defined percentage of gross sales withheld in a non-interest-bearing account for a predetermined period, with the terms fixed in the processing agreement. Third-party reporting on its gaming accounts describes five to ten per cent held for six months.

Do the arithmetic before you sign, because it is not intuitive. A ten per cent rolling reserve on a six-month hold means that, in steady state, roughly a tenth of half a year's revenue is sitting in someone else's account. For a business growing quickly, that is money that could have been inventory. Negotiate the percentage, negotiate the hold period, and above all get the release schedule and the position on termination written down — a reserve you cannot recover for six months after you leave is the actual cost of exit.

Two kinds of merchant experience

emerchantpay scores 4.0 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 148 reviews. The distribution is what to look at: 79 per cent five star, 16 per cent one star, and almost nothing in the middle. The profile is claimed, the company pays for a Trustpilot subscription and solicits reviews, so discount the average somewhat — but the shape survives that discount.

The positive reviews are about relationships: named account managers, queries resolved the same day, help navigating compliance. The negative ones are about process: payments stuck without explanation, chargeback and reporting queries going unanswered, duplicate charges not resolved. Those are not contradictory accounts of the same company. They are accounts of two different states — an account running clean, and an account that has hit a risk control. In high-risk acquiring that transition is the whole experience, and it is worth asking your prospective account manager, directly, what triggers a hold and who you speak to when one happens.

The US entity's BBB file, by contrast, is quiet: A+, unaccredited, business started August 2011, no complaint volume recorded. Read that as a small US book rather than as evidence of anything, because BBB volume tracks US consumer-facing scale and this company's is European.

Which entity is boarding you

This is the practical question a US reader most needs to ask. The FCA authorisation, the EMI status and the Visa and Mastercard principal memberships belong to emerchantpay Ltd in London. The US presence is Emerchantpay Corporation in Boca Raton, Florida, which the company describes as a hub for sales, underwriting and support.

Those are different entities under different supervision, and it changes what happens if the relationship goes wrong. Get it in writing: which entity holds the merchant agreement, which regulator supervises it, where settlement originates, in which currency, and what the dispute process is. A provider this well licensed will have clean answers; the point is to have them before you sign, not after a payment goes missing.

How to decide

• If a mainstream acquirer has declined you and you have real volume, get a quote. A licensed acquirer that underwrites your category directly is a materially better position than a broker relationship.
• If you sell across Europe, weigh the alternative payment method coverage separately from the risk appetite — it may be the bigger benefit.
• If you are a small US-only merchant in an ordinary retail category, this is more machinery than you need; take a published flat rate elsewhere.
• Model the rolling reserve before the rate. Ask for the percentage, the hold period, the release schedule and the position on termination, in writing.
• Ask for IC++ rather than blended if you have volume, and get gateway, authorisation, settlement, chargeback and FX priced as separate lines.
• Verify the FCA registration number 900778 on the Financial Services Register yourself. It takes a minute and it is the kind of check almost nobody performs.

The B reflects a well-built, properly licensed acquirer with a real risk function and a service record that is good by the standards of a difficult sector — held back, as almost everything in high-risk acquiring is, by pricing you cannot see until you are already in an underwriting process, and by reserves that cost more than the rate does. It is one of the more credible names a declined merchant can approach, which is a genuine compliment and not the same as saying it will be cheap.