Newtek Payments (NewtekOne) Review

The payments arm of NewtekOne, a Nasdaq-listed financial holding company that became a bank in January 2023 by acquiring National Bank of New York City and renaming it Newtek Bank, N.A. That makes it unusual among mid-market processors: the same company can hold your deposits, write your SBA loan, run your payroll, sell you insurance and process your cards. The payments business is real but not growing — $22.3 million of processing revenue in the first half of 2026, down from $24.0 million a year earlier — and it publishes no rates at all. The recurring merchant complaint is undisclosed fees and difficulty cancelling, and there is an old but serious regulatory matter on the record: a 2015 FTC settlement under which the Newtek processing entity paid $1.7 million over payments it handled for a robocall scheme.

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

A processor that turned into a bank

Most companies on this site are ISOs reselling somebody else's acquiring. Newtek is something less common. On 6 January 2023 the group completed the acquisition of National Bank of New York City, withdrew its business development company election, became a financial holding company and renamed the bank Newtek Bank, National Association. It renamed itself NewtekOne, Inc. in the same month. It trades on Nasdaq as NEWT, files with the SEC and is supervised as a bank holding company.

That matters in a specific way. When you evaluate a mid-market processor you are usually taking its financial condition on trust. Here you can read it. NewtekOne's Form 10-Q for the quarter to 30 June 2026 shows $15.0 million of net interest income and $60.1 million of noninterest income — about $75.1 million combined, up roughly 7% year on year — and net income of $28.0 million for the half, or $0.90 a diluted share, against $23.1 million a year earlier. The Payments segment inside that generated $22.3 million of noninterest income in the first half against $14.5 million of segment expense. There are very few processors in this bracket whose numbers you can simply look up.

Those same numbers also carry a warning. Payments segment noninterest income was $24.0 million in the first half of 2025 and $22.3 million in the first half of 2026 — down roughly 7% while the group grew. The consolidated electronic payment processing income line tells the same story more conservatively: $21.3 million against $22.3 million, a 4.9% decline. Card processing is not where NewtekOne's growth or attention is; banking and lending are. Net income in the Banking segment alone grew to $61.2 million from $20.0 million over the same period.

The bundle is the pitch

Newtek sells business deposits, SBA and commercial lending, payroll and benefits, business insurance, IT services and card processing to the same customer. For a small business owner managing five vendor relationships, one is genuinely easier, and the Trustpilot record suggests the non-payments parts of that bundle are well liked — 4.9 out of 5 from 324 reviews, overwhelmingly about payroll specialists, loan officers and insurance advisers by name.

It is worth being clear-eyed about the other side. Consolidation is lock-in by design. A merchant whose operating account, SBA loan, payroll and card processing all sit in one group has far less freedom to walk away from any one of them, and a funding hold or an underwriting decision on the merchant side reaches a company that is also holding the balance. Ask what right of set-off exists between the accounts, and keep a banking relationship somewhere else.

The payments product itself

Newtek publishes no rates. Its payments pages describe products — cloud POS, mobile acceptance, ecommerce integration, industry configurations for retail, restaurants and bars, grocery and assisted living, and a 'Zero Cost Processing' surcharge or cash-discount programme — and route you to a specialist. Third-party reviewers report NewtPay at 2.85% + $0.28 with no monthly fee, NewtPay PRO at 2.19% + $0.26 for $15 a month, no setup fee on either, a two-year term with no cancellation fee, and a rate-match promise of matching or beating your current rate or paying $250.

Two of those are worth acting on. A two-year term with no exit fee is a better structure than most agent-sold competitors offer and is worth confirming in writing. And a rate-match offer is a public admission that the first number is not the last number — bring a competing quote.

One structural point often missed: Newtek Bank being a bank does not mean Newtek Bank is your acquirer. The company's own footer names Westamerica Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, Fifth Third Bank, Synovus Bank and Elavon, Inc. as sponsors. Ask which one is behind your account, because that is whose rules govern holds and settlement.

What merchants complain about

The pattern is narrow and repeats. Fees that were not disclosed, or that a salesperson said would not apply, appearing on later statements. Difficulty closing an account. Billing that continued for equipment after it had been returned. Persistent outbound sales calls. The negative customer reviews on NewtekOne's own BBB profile are blunt about it — one tells small businesses looking for check and card processing to run away — even though the profile carries an A+ and has been accredited since January 2021.

That contradiction is normal and worth naming: a BBB letter grade tracks how diligently a business answers complaints, not how many it generates. Newtek answers them.

The FTC matter, in proportion

In May 2015 the FTC obtained a final order against Universal Processing Services of Wisconsin LLC, trading as Newtek Merchant Solutions, over payments it processed for 'Treasure Your Success', a robocall operation selling bogus credit-card interest-rate reductions. The FTC's case was that the processor assisted and facilitated the telemarketers' Telemarketing Sales Rule violations by processing the payments despite warning signs. Newtek paid $1.7 million in restitution, jointly with the ISO HES Merchant Services and its owner, who had been found liable in February 2015 for eleven violations.

This is eleven years old, it predates the bank acquisition and the current corporate structure, and we found nothing comparable since. It should not be the reason you rule Newtek out. It is worth knowing because it is precisely the failure mode — boarding a merchant whose business model should have raised questions — that a processor's underwriting is supposed to prevent, and because it is the sort of history that a bundled, bank-owned provider's marketing does not mention.

How to buy it well

• Get a full written fee schedule — processing rate, monthly, PCI, equipment, and the exact terms of any Zero Cost Processing programme — before you sign anything.
• Bring a competing quote and invoke the rate-match offer. It is published for a reason.
• Confirm the contract term and that there is genuinely no cancellation fee, in your own paperwork rather than on a review site.
• Ask which sponsor bank holds the account and what the funding timetable and batch cut-off are.
• If you are taking a surcharge or cash-discount programme, confirm which mechanism it is and that it is lawful where you trade — surcharging credit cards is prohibited in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and Puerto Rico.
• If you also bank or borrow here, ask what set-off rights exist between the accounts, and keep a second banking relationship.

The B- is a solid, regulated, unusually verifiable company whose payments arm is average and under-invested. The bank ownership is a genuine differentiator and the reported contract terms are better than most. The absence of any published pricing, a consistent record of undisclosed-fee complaints, and a payments line that is shrinking while the rest of the group grows are what keep it there.