North (North American Bancard) Review

One of the largest privately held US acquirers, rebranded from North American Bancard in 2024. It publishes POS rates and says it does not require a long-term contract, but reviewers who have read its traditional merchant agreement report a three-year term with a liquidated-damages termination clause — and its public complaint record is poor.

A big acquirer with a new name

North American Bancard rebranded to North in August 2024, folding more than a dozen businesses it had bought over fifteen years — Payanywhere, PayTrace, Electronic Payment Exchange, Total Merchant Services, Point & Pay, CardWorks Acquiring and others — under a single brand. The company was founded by Marc Gardner, who still runs it, operates from Troy, Michigan, and says on its own company page that it processes more than $100 billion a year and employs more than 1,300 people. Secondary sources put the merchant count above 350,000; North itself says only “hundreds of thousands”.

One point of housekeeping: the founding year is not universally agreed. North's own company page says 1992, and its 2024 rebrand announcement talked about roughly thirty years in business, which fits. Its BBB profile records the business as started in 1985. We use 1992 because it is the company's own stated date and the one the corroborating evidence supports; the BBB entry is the outlier.

Two very different contracts

North publishes POS pricing, which is more than most ISOs of its size do: 2.69% per in-person transaction, 3.49% plus 19 cents for keyed entries and invoices, on plans costing nothing, $14.95 or $29.95 a month. Ecommerce is custom-quoted. Taken alone, that is a reasonable, legible small-business offer.

The problem is that reviewers cannot agree on what North's sales channel actually writes. One independent review states flatly that North offers month-to-month service and requires no long-term contract, with no published termination fee. Another, quoting the merchant agreement, describes a 36-month term whose termination clause is liquidated damages rather than a flat fee: cancel early and you owe the remaining monthly charges and minimums for the balance of the term, in no case less than $295, debited automatically. Thirty months left on a $99 monthly minimum is a very different number from a $295 exit fee. We could not resolve the conflict from public sources, which makes reading your own term and termination clauses the single most important thing to do before signing.

• Ask explicitly whether you are being offered the month-to-month plan or a 36-month agreement
• Read the termination section in full — look for the words 'liquidated damages' and 'remaining term'
• Get the PCI compliance charge quoted as an annual figure, not as 'standard'
• Treat any equipment lease as a separate contract; it typically survives cancellation of the processing agreement
• Diary the automatic-renewal notice window on the day you sign

What merchants actually say

North holds an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and has been accredited since May 2001, but the sentiment underneath is poor: BBB's complaint page records 25 complaints closed in the last three years, 18 of them in the last twelve months, and third-party summaries put its BBB customer-review average near 1.2 out of 5. Trustpilot is milder on the north.com listing — about 3.2 across a small number of reviews — while the older North American Bancard listing sits near 1.5. The gap between the letter grade and the review scores is not a contradiction: the grade largely measures complaint handling, the reviews measure the experience.

The themes are consistent and they are contractual rather than technical. Cancellation costs merchants did not expect. Fees — PCI compliance, lease cancellations, add-on program enrolments — that were not discussed at signing. Difficulty getting a straight answer from whichever partner sold the account. Very little of it is about whether the terminals work; they generally do.

Where North is a good answer

If you want one supplier for hardware, POS software, gateway, loyalty and funding, and you take the published month-to-month plan, North is a competent choice backed by real processing infrastructure rather than a reseller relationship. B2B merchants have a specific reason to look: PayTrace does Level II and Level III interchange optimisation properly, and on commercial-card volume that saves more than any headline rate negotiation will.

If instead you are handed a multi-year agreement with a leased terminal and a rate that was never written down, that is the version of North the complaint record is about. The company is evidently capable of selling either one. Which you get depends almost entirely on what you insist on before you sign.