Pin Payments Review

Pin Payments is an online card payment service for small and mid-size businesses in Australia and New Zealand. It was set up in Perth in 2011, launched in April 2013 and is now based in Melbourne. You do not need your own merchant account: Pin signs you up, approves most accounts within one to two business days, and by default pays you out two business days after each sale. As of October 2026, its pricing page lists 1.6% + 30c for domestic cards in Australia (GST included) and 1.9% + 30c in New Zealand (plus GST). International cards cost 3.4% + 30c in both countries, on the same GST basis as the domestic rate. There is no setup fee, monthly fee or lock-in contract, and a lost dispute costs $25. Pin covers online checkout, Xero invoice payments, recurring billing, a hosted payment page, a dashboard virtual terminal and APIs for platforms and payouts. It does not sell a card reader. Ownership has changed twice: Checkout.com bought Pin in May 2020, and Sydney payments company Fat Zebra bought it from Checkout.com in December 2024. Pin's terms are now a schedule to Fat Zebra's master agreement. Independent reviews are few but positive.

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

What Pin Payments is

Pin Payments is an online card payment service for small and mid-size businesses in Australia and New Zealand. Its trading company, Southern Payment Systems Pty Ltd, has held an Australian Business Number since November 2011, and Pin's About page gives 2011 as its founding year. The business began in Perth: the ABN record lists a Western Australian main business location until August 2019, when it moved to Melbourne, and news coverage of both acquisitions still described Pin as Perth-based. Pin says it launched in April 2013, which is the year Checkout.com gave as its founding date in 2020 and the year Pin's own December 2024 announcement counts from. The founders were Grant Bissett and Dominic Pym, who set out to give small businesses card acceptance without the weeks-long bank merchant-facility applications of the time. Pin serves businesses in both Australia and New Zealand, and in December 2024 it said it supported more than 13,000 businesses.

Who owns it

Pin has changed hands twice. Checkout.com, the global payment processor, bought it in May 2020 for an undisclosed sum, when Pin had 14 staff and more than 12,000 businesses. In December 2024 Fat Zebra, a Sydney payments company, bought Pin from Checkout.com, also for an undisclosed sum. At the time of the deal, Fat Zebra said it processed more than 250 million transactions a year, and Pin said Fat Zebra served over 30,000 merchants and platforms. Pin's CEO, Chris Dahl, joined Fat Zebra's leadership team, and Pin told customers its team was moving across to Fat Zebra. The Pin brand, website, dashboard and pricing remain in use as of October 2026. However, the Terms link on Pin's website now leads to Fat Zebra's master services agreement. Pin's own terms are Schedule 4 of that agreement, which names Southern Payment Systems as the provider of Pin's services. Pin's website footer gives a Melbourne office address, while the agreement gives an address in Surry Hills, Sydney, for Southern Payment Systems.

Why we list Pin as a payment facilitator

Pin does not ask you to get your own merchant facility from a bank. Its feature pages describe a merchant account and payment gateway in a single account, and it onboards each business itself, running the ID checks, setting the price and controlling the payout schedule. Under the current agreement, merchants also accept Checkout.com's sub-merchant terms and Fat Zebra's merchant agreement, and Fat Zebra discloses that, for Visa and Mastercard in Australia, it is a registered payment facilitator of both Checkout.com Australia and NAB; for eftpos, it is the acquirer of record for eftpos Direct transactions. Fat Zebra does not say which acquirer handles Pin accounts. That is the payment facilitator model, so we list Pin as a payfac rather than a gateway or an ISO. Under the Pin schedule, payment funds are held in a custody account by a custodian acting as Pin's agent; the terms refer to bank accounts held by Perpetual Group companies, and merchants earn no interest on those balances.

What it costs

• Domestic cards, Australia: 1.6% + 30c per transaction, GST inclusive, as of October 2026.
• Domestic cards, New Zealand: 1.9% + 30c per transaction, GST exclusive.
• International cards: 3.4% + 30c (GST inclusive in Australia, GST exclusive in New Zealand).
• Foreign currency charges settled in AUD or NZD: 3.4% + 30c, plus a 1.7% margin on the exchange rate.
• Foreign currency charges settled in that currency (Australian accounts): 3.9% + 30c, no conversion.
• Lost dispute: $25 administration fee. Refunds: no fee.
• Transfers to a third-party bank account through the Payouts API: 30c each.
• No setup fee, monthly fee, minimum or lock-in contract. Custom pricing above $30,000 a month; discounted rate for registered not-for-profits on request.

Pin's pricing page labels the Australian domestic rate as 'from' 1.6% + 30c, but its own fee guide charges every Australian-issued card on an AUD transaction at 1.6% + 30c and does not list a separate American Express rate. As an illustration, an Australian business taking $10,000 a month in 100 domestic card payments of $100 pays $160 + $30 = $190, or 1.9% of sales. The 30c fixed fee weighs on small tickets: a $20 domestic sale costs 62c, or 3.1%. If a large share of your customers pay with overseas cards, budget for 3.4% + 30c on those sales. Pin's tools can add a surcharge to cover fees on the payment page, payment button, dashboard charges and Xero invoices. However, from 1 October 2026 the Reserve Bank of Australia removed surcharging on debit, prepaid and credit cards on the eftpos, Mastercard and Visa networks, so Australian businesses should budget to absorb these fees in their prices rather than pass them on.

How it works

You create an account online, submit business, bank and director details, and complete ID verification for a director. Pin says the application takes about ten minutes and approval usually takes one to two business days. You can then take payments through an ecommerce plugin (Shopify, WooCommerce, Adobe Commerce and many others), a hosted payment page or payment button, Pay now buttons on Xero invoices, recurring plans, manual entry in the dashboard, or the API with Hosted Fields. New accounts can take up to $25,000 per charge, with no daily cap, and support can raise the limit. Pin says it is a PCI DSS Level 1 provider, and Hosted Fields or its hosted tools can keep a merchant in the shorter SAQ A questionnaire. Pin does not sell a card reader. Its mobile point-of-sale screen is intended for occasional in-person payments, and new accounts are limited to $1,000 per charge through it.

Payouts

Funds are transferred to your bank account daily, on a default two-business-day settlement: a Monday charge lands on Wednesday, and a Friday charge on the following Tuesday. Foreign currency charges take two more business days. Support can switch you to a less frequent schedule such as weekly, and the Fat Zebra terms say the payout schedule is assessed for each business at onboarding. Refunds are paid from Pin's funds and then deducted from your next transfer. Disputed amounts plus the $25 fee are also withheld from your next transfer. Australian accounts can also hold their balance and push funds by API to third-party bank accounts, with a 2pm AEST cutoff for next-business-day arrival. Pin publishes no faster or same-day payout option.

Contract terms, reserves and account closure

Pin has no lock-in contract, minimum processing amount or sign-up fee, and you close your account by contacting support. The binding terms are the Fat Zebra Master Agreement with its Pin Payments schedule. Under that agreement, fees can change on at least 30 days' written notice, and you are taken to accept a change if you do not end the agreement within 14 days (clause 8.1). The provider may require a cash reserve held back from your transactions or debited from your settlement account, sized at its discretion, and it may hold reserves or reverse charges on preorders for goods not yet delivered. It can suspend or end the service immediately after default events listed in the Risk Termination clause, including excessive chargebacks, fraud, a material change to your business or a change of ownership without consent, or on the risk grounds in clause 10.2(a). It can also close your account at any time on 30 days' notice without giving a reason (clause 10.2(b)), and it can withhold settlement if you fail KYC or AML checks. Amounts you owe survive termination (clause 8.9). The agreement is governed by New South Wales law (clause 34.1), and disputes go to arbitration seated in Sydney, with a waiver of class actions (clauses 25.1 and 25.3). Merchants must have a permanent establishment, an active ABN or NZBN and a local address in Australia or New Zealand.

Reputation and complaints

There is little independent review evidence. As of October 2026, Capterra Australia shows a 5.0 rating from five reviews, all posted between July and October 2024. Reviewers praise the simple setup, local support, the Xero integration and the absence of monthly fees, and one asks for physical terminals. Trustpilot returned no profile for pinpayments.com when we checked. Pin's Xero page quotes a 4.4 rating from Xero app store users, which we did not verify independently. Our searches found no lawsuit, regulatory enforcement action or data breach naming Pin Payments or Southern Payment Systems.

Who Pin Payments suits

Pin suits an Australian or New Zealand small business that takes card payments online, through Xero invoices or on a subscription, and wants a published per-transaction price, two-day payouts and no contract. It is a reasonable fit for software platforms that want co-branded onboarding and payouts to third parties in Australia. It does not suit a business that needs counter terminals, one based outside the two countries, a New Zealand business whose customers want to pay with Amex, or a business with heavy volumes that should be negotiating a rate. Because Pin is now part of Fat Zebra, check the current agreement and pricing page before signing up, and keep an eye on notices about future changes to the service.