Princeton, New Jersey (operating entity registered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)Fact-checked August 25, 2026
Heartland Payment Systems Review
B-A large US small-business processor founded in 1997, bought by Global Payments for $4.3 billion in 2016 and now openly in the middle of being retired as a brand — Global Payments' own page is headed "Heartland Payment Systems is now Global Payments." It still sells under the Heartland name at heartland.us, still runs the Merchant Bill of Rights it invented, and still publishes no pricing. Signing today means signing with a brand that is being folded away around you.
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- Rate from
- Not published. Heartland offers ecommerce and virtual-terminal acceptance but quotes it only through a sales rep. Interchange-plus is available and is the structure Heartland markets hardest. Its FAQ states that for interchange-plus customers "Heartland doesn't receive any portion of interchange fees" and passes wholesale cost through without markup — but the markup over interchange, which is the only number that determines what you actually pay Heartland, is not published anywhere and is negotiable. Ask for it in basis points and get it in writing.
- Monthly
- A monthly "service and regulatory mandate" fee is charged; the amount is not published. Heartland says it covers 24/7/365 US-based support, PCI validation through its partner Sysnet, enrolment in a Merchant Protection Plan covering up to $100,000 in the event of a data breach, and access to the InfoCentral portal.
- Contract
- Not published. Independent reviewers consistently describe a three-year initial term that auto-renews in one-year increments unless cancelled in writing roughly three months before the end of the term. Heartland does not state its term length publicly, so verify it on the agreement you are handed.
- Founded
- 1997
- Headquarters
- Princeton, New Jersey (operating entity registered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)
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Best for
Established US retail and restaurant businesses that want a large, well-supported processor, will negotiate interchange-plus in basis points, and are comfortable being migrated onto Global Payments' platform and branding over the life of the contract.
How it scores
Pricing2.5
Features4.0
Ease of use3.5
Support3.5
Contract2.0
Reputation score3.0
What it costs
Details →- Online
- Not published. Heartland offers ecommerce and virtual-terminal acceptance but quotes it only through a sales rep. Interchange-plus is available and is the structure Heartland markets hardest. Its FAQ states that for interchange-plus customers "Heartland doesn't receive any portion of interchange fees" and passes wholesale cost through without markup — but the markup over interchange, which is the only number that determines what you actually pay Heartland, is not published anywhere and is negotiable. Ask for it in basis points and get it in writing.
- Monthly
- A monthly "service and regulatory mandate" fee is charged; the amount is not published. Heartland says it covers 24/7/365 US-based support, PCI validation through its partner Sysnet, enrolment in a Merchant Protection Plan covering up to $100,000 in the event of a data breach, and access to the InfoCentral portal.
What others rate them
Details →- BBB
- null
The takeB-
Heartland invented the Merchant Bill of Rights and has spent nearly thirty years making transparency its differentiator, which makes it genuinely odd that it publishes no rate, no term length and no cancellation fee anywhere. The support is real, the interchange-plus option is real, and the $100,000 breach cover bundled into the monthly fee is a better deal than most processors offer. But Global Payments has now put "Heartland Payment Systems is now Global Payments" at the top of its own brand page, so a merchant signing today is signing into a brand migration — new statements, new portals, new reps — with a contract that independent reviewers describe as three years with an auto-renewal and a $295 exit fee. That combination is why this sits at B- rather than higher.
Skip if you
Want to see a rate before you talk to a sales rep, cannot commit to a multi-year term with an auto-renewal, or do not want to be in the middle of a brand and platform migration while you are also learning a new payment system.
Chapter 1
Should you choose Heartland Payment Systems?
The headline take, the audiences it's right (and wrong) for, and the genuine differentiators behind the verdict.
About
A large US small-business processor founded in 1997, bought by Global Payments for $4.3 billion in 2016 and now openly in the middle of being retired as a brand — Global Payments' own page is headed "Heartland Payment Systems is now Global Payments." It still sells under the Heartland name at heartland.us, still runs the Merchant Bill of Rights it invented, and still publishes no pricing. Signing today means signing with a brand that is being folded away around you.
Pros, cons, and audience
Pros
- The Merchant Bill of Rights is a real, published document and Heartland is the only processor to have established one. Its FAQ walks through interchange, effective rate and markup in plain language and tells merchants how to calculate what they are actually paying.
- Interchange-plus is offered and promoted, not hidden behind a tiered default. Heartland states that on interchange-plus it takes no share of interchange and passes wholesale cost through without markup.
- The monthly service fee bundles PCI compliance validation through Sysnet and enrolment in a Merchant Protection Plan covering up to $100,000 in the event of a data breach — both of which are usually separate line items elsewhere.
- 24/7/365 US-based support, with Heartland claiming an average answer time of 30 seconds on its own site.
- Scale and stability behind it. Global Payments bought Heartland for $4.3 billion in 2016 and closed a $24.25 billion acquisition of Worldpay on 12 January 2026, so the processing platform underneath is not going anywhere even as the Heartland name does.
- Heartland's own FAQ tells you how to lower your costs — validate PCI, accept EMV, avoid downgrades, prioritise debit, consider surcharging where legal — rather than only selling you services.
Cons
- The brand is being retired. Global Payments' brand page is headed "Heartland Payment Systems is now Global Payments" and tells merchants the name has changed. heartland.us is still live and still taking new applications under the Heartland name, so what you are actually buying is a Global Payments account mid-rebrand.
- No pricing of any kind is published. The FAQ names every fee category — discount fee, transaction fee, monthly settlement cost, service and regulatory mandate — and attaches a number to none of them. For a company whose differentiator is transparency, that is the central contradiction of the review.
- Contract terms are also unpublished. Independent reviewers describe a three-year term with automatic one-year renewals, a $295 early termination fee, a further $100 on leased hardware and a written-notice requirement. Heartland does not confirm or deny any of it publicly, so you cannot check before you are in a sales conversation.
- Fee and rate increases are the dominant complaint. The BBB profile for the operating entity shows 125 complaints in three years, and the recurring pattern is a price that moved after the account went live and that merchants say was not disclosed at signing.
- The interchange-plus markup — the only Heartland-controlled number in the whole quote — is negotiable and unpublished, which means the price you get depends on how hard you push rather than on a rate card.
- Heartland was the victim of one of the largest card breaches on record: card data taken via an SQL injection compromise and disclosed on 20 January 2009 — the Department of Justice indictment put the figure at 130 million card numbers, while other contemporary estimates were nearer 100 million — with reporting at the time putting Heartland's compensation payments at over $145 million. The company rebuilt around end-to-end encryption afterwards and this is now old history, but it is part of the record and it is why the breach-cover benefit exists at all.
- Global Payments agreed in May 2025 to sell Heartland Payroll Solutions to Acrisure for $1.1 billion, so a merchant who signed up for the payments-plus-payroll bundle is now dealing with two companies and two contracts.
What makes them different
The genuine differentiator
The Merchant Bill of Rights — Heartland's own FAQ calls it out as the only such document in the industry — plus a monthly fee that bundles PCI validation through Sysnet and up to $100,000 of data-breach cover rather than billing them as the surprise line items most processors use them for.
How we score it
2.5
Pricing Transparency
4
Feature Set
3.5
Ease of Use
3.5
Customer Support
2
Contract Terms
3
Industry Reputation
Chapter 2
What it costs
Real-world cost at three volumes, plus the rates, fees, payouts, and contract terms that drive them.
What Heartland Payment Systems actually costs
Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Heartland Payment Systems’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.
Small business
$10K/mo volume · ~$75 avg transaction
$NaN/year
≈ $NaN/mo · NaN% effective rate
Growing merchant
$50K/mo volume · ~$100 avg transaction
$NaN/year
≈ $NaN/mo · NaN% effective rate
High volume
$250K/mo volume · ~$150 avg transaction
$NaN/year
≈ $NaN/mo · NaN% effective rate
Pricing details
A transparency brand that does not publish its prices
Heartland Payment Systems was founded in 1997 by Robert Carr and built its identity on a single idea: that merchants were being quietly overcharged and deserved to see what they were paying for. It produced the Merchant Bill of Rights, still on the site today, and its FAQ page is one of the better plain-English explanations of interchange, effective rate and downgrades that any processor publishes. It also, in 2026, publishes no rate, no term length and no cancellation fee. That gap between what Heartland says about transparency and what Heartland actually discloses is the honest summary of this review.
The brand is being retired while it is still selling
Global Payments bought Heartland in 2016 for $4.3 billion. For most of the decade since, the Heartland name carried on more or less untouched. That has now changed: Global Payments' own brand page opens with "Heartland Payment Systems is now Global Payments" and tells merchants that the name has changed while the service has not. Meanwhile heartland.us is still live, still branded Heartland, and still collecting new applications through a "Get pricing" form.
This matters practically rather than cosmetically. A merchant signing a three-year agreement today can reasonably expect, over that term, a change of statement branding, a migration of the POS story toward Global Payments' Genius line, and a shift of portals — the site already points existing merchants at both InfoCentral and Global Payments' My Account. None of that is fatal. But it is work, it lands on you rather than on the processor, and it is not what the marketing implies.
What you can actually find out about the price
Heartland's FAQ names four things it charges for: a discount fee, a per-transaction fee, a cost for settling monthly rather than daily, and a monthly "service and regulatory mandate" fee. It attaches no figures to any of them. The monthly fee is at least well spent by industry standards — it bundles PCI compliance validation through Sysnet, enrolment in a Merchant Protection Plan covering up to $100,000 in the event of a data breach, and access to the InfoCentral portal, all of which are commonly billed as separate surprises elsewhere.
Interchange-plus is available and Heartland pushes it. Its own wording is that on interchange-plus it receives no portion of interchange and passes wholesale cost through without markup. That is true and it is the right structure to ask for. It is also incomplete: the markup over interchange is the only number Heartland controls, it is negotiable, and it is not published. Get it quoted as basis points plus cents per transaction, in writing, and calculate your effective rate from your first statement — Heartland's own FAQ tells you how.
The contract is where the complaints are
We could not find a term length or an early termination fee stated by Heartland anywhere. Independent review sites are consistent with each other: a three-year initial term, automatic renewal in one-year increments unless cancelled in writing well before the anniversary, a $295 early termination fee and a further $100 on leased hardware. We are reporting that as third-party consensus rather than as fact, because the company itself will not confirm it — but the consistency across unrelated reviewers, and the shape of the BBB complaints, both point the same way.
The BBB record is worth reading carefully because Heartland has more than one profile and they disagree. The Oklahoma City entity — "Heartland Payment Systems, LLC" — holds an A+ rating despite not being accredited, and its complaints page shows 125 complaints in three years with 37 closed in the last twelve months. The Princeton corporate profile is simply "Not Rated". The complaint pattern is not about outages or support quality; it is about prices that moved after go-live and terms merchants say were never explained.
The breach, in context
Heartland was at the centre of one of the largest card-data breaches ever recorded: disclosed on 20 January 2009 and traced to an SQL injection compromise, with Albert Gonzalez sentenced to 20 years in March 2010. The Department of Justice indictment put the theft at 130 million card numbers; other contemporary estimates were nearer 100 million, and the sources do not reconcile. Reporting at the time put Heartland's compensation payments at over $145 million. That is seventeen years ago, the company rebuilt around end-to-end encryption in response, and today's processing runs on Global Payments' infrastructure. It is history rather than a live risk — but it is also why the $100,000 breach cover exists in the monthly fee, and it is a reasonable thing to know about a company you are handing your customers' card data to.
Who should sign
Heartland suits an established US retail or restaurant business that wants a large processor with genuine round-the-clock US support, is prepared to negotiate interchange-plus properly, and is not put off by a multi-year term. Get three things in writing before you sign: the interchange-plus markup in basis points, the term length and renewal mechanism, and the total cost of leaving early including hardware. If a rep will not put those in the agreement, that is your answer.
Skip it if you want to compare a published rate against Square or Stripe without a sales call, if a three-year commitment with an auto-renewal is not something you can live with, or if you would rather not spend the next two years being migrated onto a different brand's platform while you are also trying to run a business.
Processing Rates
Online
Not published. Heartland offers ecommerce and virtual-terminal acceptance but quotes it only through a sales rep. Interchange-plus is available and is the structure Heartland markets hardest. Its FAQ states that for interchange-plus customers "Heartland doesn't receive any portion of interchange fees" and passes wholesale cost through without markup — but the markup over interchange, which is the only number that determines what you actually pay Heartland, is not published anywhere and is negotiable. Ask for it in basis points and get it in writing.
Card-not-present, e-commerce, and online payments
In-person
Not published. Heartland's own FAQ describes its fee components — a discount fee, a per-transaction fee, a monthly-versus-daily settlement cost and a "service and regulatory mandate" monthly fee — but attaches no numbers to any of them. Third-party reviewers have reported a flat rate of 2.6% + $0.10 for card-present sales; we could not corroborate that figure from Heartland or Global Payments, so treat it as reported rather than quoted.
Card-present retail and point-of-sale transactions
Fees
Monthly Fee
A monthly "service and regulatory mandate" fee is charged; the amount is not published. Heartland says it covers 24/7/365 US-based support, PCI validation through its partner Sysnet, enrolment in a Merchant Protection Plan covering up to $100,000 in the event of a data breach, and access to the InfoCentral portal.
Recurring monthly account fee
PCI Compliance Fee
Bundled into the monthly service fee rather than billed separately — Heartland makes a point of this, noting that many processors expect merchants to source a PCI vendor themselves.
Annual PCI DSS compliance and security fee
Early Termination Fee
Not published by Heartland. Multiple independent review sites report a $295 early termination fee plus a further $100 cancellation fee on leased hardware, and a 60-day written notice requirement. We could not confirm these from Heartland's own documents; ask to see the fee schedule and the term page of the agreement before signing.
Fee for canceling before contract end
Contract Terms
Contract Length
Not published. Independent reviewers consistently describe a three-year initial term that auto-renews in one-year increments unless cancelled in writing roughly three months before the end of the term. Heartland does not state its term length publicly, so verify it on the agreement you are handed.
Required commitment period
Cancellation Process
Reported by third parties as requiring written notice — commonly cited as 60 days — with an early termination fee if you leave mid-term. Get the notice period and the exit fee in writing; the most frequent complaint against Heartland is that neither was made clear at signing.
How to terminate your account
Heartland Payment Systems Pricing Calculator
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.
$
$
Estimated Monthly Cost
$24.00
Effective Rate
0.24%
Monthly fee$24.00
Number of transactions200
Flat all-in rate (interchange built in)
Chapter 3
What you actually get
Products, integrations, payment-type coverage, security posture, and how their support holds up in practice.
Products & Services
payment processing
Payments+
Card acceptance in store, online and on the go, covering credit, EMV chip, gift cards and mobile wallets including Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, plus ACH and phone/online bill payment options.
pos
Point of sale
Cloud-based POS software with retail and restaurant configurations and a choice of hardware. New sales are being steered toward Global Payments' Genius POS line.
other
Merchant Protection Plan
Included in the monthly service fee; covers a merchant for up to $100,000 in the event of a data breach. PCI validation is provided through Sysnet at no separate charge.
other
InfoCentral merchant portal
Online reporting for batches, statements, deposits and account data. Still live for existing Heartland merchants alongside Global Payments' My Account.
Support & Contact
Chapter 4
What others say
Synthesis of third-party platform reviews and industry ratings — agreements, disagreements, and which signals to weight.
Platform Ratings
Aggregated Trust Score
Based on 0 reviews across 1 rating platform
0.0
out of 5
Overall Rating
Better Business Bureau
0 reviews
Reviewer Notes
Checked 25 August 2026. Heartland has several BBB profiles and they do not agree, which is worth knowing before anyone quotes one at you. The Oklahoma City "Heartland Payment Systems, LLC" profile — the operating entity, founded 3/27/1999 per BBB — carries an A+ rating and is not BBB accredited; its complaints page shows 125 complaints in the last three years and 37 closed in the last twelve months. The Princeton, New Jersey corporate profile is "Not Rated" and states that complaints are handled by another BBB. We have deliberately recorded no star rating here: the A+ is a BBB grade for complaint handling, not a customer satisfaction score. The recurring themes are unannounced fee and rate increases, difficulty cancelling, and charges merchants say were never disclosed at the point of sale.
Chapter 6
Common questions
Frequently Asked Questions
General
Both, in an awkward way. Global Payments acquired Heartland in 2016 for $4.3 billion, and Global Payments' own brand page is now headed "Heartland Payment Systems is now Global Payments" and tells merchants the name has changed. At the same time heartland.us remains live, still carries Heartland branding and still takes new applications. Practically: you are buying a Global Payments merchant account, and the Heartland name on your statement is being phased out.
Pricing
Contracts & Terms
Support
How we evaluated Heartland Payment Systems
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.
Last fact-checked August 25, 2026
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