Windcave Review

Windcave is a New Zealand payments company, founded in Auckland in 1999 as Direct Payment Solutions (DPS). It traded as Payment Express from 2015 and as Windcave from 1 July 2019. It sells three things that most providers split up: an online payment gateway, payment terminals it designs and builds itself, and merchant acquiring, meaning it can hold your merchant account as well as carry your transactions. It acquires cards in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Canada, the EU and the US, and it is strongest in unattended payments such as parking, vending and kiosks. Windcave publishes no prices. Gateway fees, terminal rental and merchant service rates are all quoted per account, on blended, interchange-plus or interchange-plus-plus pricing depending on the country. Its merchant FAQ says acquiring agreements run for 36 months, while its published standard terms define a one-month term that renews automatically, and those terms set an early-termination fee of at least NZ$400, A$400, £400 or €400 per merchant facility. Funds generally settle the next business day. Windcave is privately owned by its founder and chief executive, Andrew (Andy) Cullen. Public review data is thin: eight one-star Trustpilot reviews and no BBB profile, as of October 2026.

What Windcave is

Windcave is a payments technology company from Auckland, New Zealand. The company was incorporated on 21 April 1999 as Direct Payment Solutions Limited, better known as DPS. It became Payment Express Limited in September 2015 and Windcave Limited on 1 July 2019. Andrew (Andy) Cullen, whom Windcave describes as its founder, has been a director since incorporation and runs the company as chief executive. Windcave says it has more than 400 staff and operates in more than 40 countries, with offices across New Zealand and Australia and in London, Vilnius, Malta, New York and Tempe, Arizona.

Most merchants meet Windcave in one of two ways. Many New Zealand and Australian websites, and the ecommerce plugins that serve them, use its gateway; you will still see the DPS and PxPay names in older integrations. Shoppers also meet it through payment terminals in shops, car parks and vending machines. Windcave designs and manufactures those terminals itself and opened a purpose-built facility in Ellerslie, Auckland, in September 2024.

Ownership

Windcave is privately owned. In April 2025 New Zealand's Overseas Investment Office consented to Windcave LLC, a newly created US company wholly owned by Andrew John Cullen, acquiring 100% of Windcave Limited. The regulator described the transaction as a corporate restructure, with Cullen as the vendor and 100% owner and an asset value of NZ$450 million. Company directories based on the New Zealand register still list a holding company, Star One Limited, as the sole shareholder of Windcave Limited. Either way, ownership sits with Cullen. We found no private equity or strategic investor.

Why we list Windcave as a payment platform

We classify providers by who holds the merchant agreement. Windcave started as a gateway, carrying transactions from a merchant's website or terminal to the merchant's bank acquirer, and it still sells that service on its own. Since 2016, though, it has been an acquirer in its own right. Its timeline lists merchant services in New Zealand from 2016, where it calls itself the first non-bank acquirer, Australia from 2018, the UK and US from 2020, Canada from 2021 and the EU from 2023. Its UK company is an authorised payment institution with the Financial Conduct Authority (firm reference 826626), and its Malta company is licensed by the Malta Financial Services Authority to provide payment services across the EU. In the US it holds a principal Discover licence, participates in American Express OptBlue, and acquires Visa and Mastercard under BIN sponsorship with Pinnacle Bank, so in the US a sponsor bank sits behind it. When you take Windcave merchant services, your merchant agreement is with Windcave, and Windcave also runs the gateway, the host and the terminal. That full stack is why we list it with payment platforms, alongside acquirers such as Tyro and Adyen, rather than with gateways only. If you use Windcave only as a gateway with your bank's merchant account, your merchant agreement stays with the bank.

What it costs

Windcave publishes no prices. As of October 2026 its global website has no pricing page and no country selector, and every product page sends you to sales. Rates for the gateway, terminal rental and merchant services are quoted per account. The merchant FAQ does describe how pricing is built, which is more than many quote-only providers offer:

• Gateway: a monthly service fee plus a fee for every transaction Windcave validates, declined as well as approved. An account that is fully paid up can be suspended without a reconnection fee.
• Merchant services, blended: one percentage covering interchange, scheme and acquirer fees. Offered in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and Canada.
• Merchant services, interchange-plus: interchange passed through at cost, plus one acquirer fee that includes scheme fees. Offered in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and Canada.
• Merchant services, interchange-plus-plus: interchange, scheme fees and Windcave's acquirer fee shown separately. Offered in Australia, the UK and the US. In the US scheme fees are passed through at cost; in Australia and the UK they are an average, reviewed each July.
• A minimum monthly merchant service fee can apply to each transaction type, under the New Zealand terms.
• Chargebacks: NZ$25, A$25, £25 or €25 each, at Windcave's discretion, under the New Zealand, Australian, UK and EU terms.
• International cards carry an extra international fee on top of the base rate.

Third-party comparison sites quote Windcave gateway plan prices, but those figures do not appear on any page Windcave publishes, so we do not repeat them. Ask for the full fee schedule in writing, including terminal rental, SIM connectivity, the minimum monthly fee and any setup fee, before you sign a 36-month agreement. The New Zealand terms let Windcave change your merchant service rate on 30 days' written notice.

Products

The online gateway offers a Windcave-hosted payment page, a merchant-hosted option, REST APIs, payment links by email or SMS, tokenisation, 3-D Secure and multi-currency processing for Visa and Mastercard. Windcave says it integrates with more than 200 ecommerce platforms. Alternative payment methods depend on the country. Recent additions include Afterpay (October 2025), iDEAL | Wero in the Netherlands (February 2026) and US bank payments through Plaid (June 2026). Account2Account lets shoppers pay by online bank transfer.

In store, Windcave sells its CHU200 family of countertop and portable terminals and the MTM300. They work standalone or integrated with point-of-sale software, and Windcave claims more than 300 POS, property management and ERP integrations. Unattended payments are where Windcave is most distinctive. It makes modular, weather-resistant readers and keypads for car parks, vending machines, kiosks and EV chargers, and it describes itself as the global leader in unattended cashless payments, a claim we have not seen measured independently. Tap to Pay on iPhone, offered through partner POS apps built on Windcave's SDK, was announced for New Zealand and Australia in December 2024. The Payline portal handles reporting, refunds and keyed mail and telephone orders.

Contracts, settlement and holds

The merchant FAQ says merchant services agreements run for 36 months and that cancellation fees apply. The standard published terms, by contrast, define the term as one month and, in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the EU, say the agreement renews automatically for further terms unless either side gives a month's written notice. The length that applies to you is whatever your own agreement or letter of offer states. Check it. The published terms set the exit fee. To end merchant services you give three months' written notice in New Zealand, Australia and the UK (one month if less than three months of the term remain) and one month in the EU. If you leave within the term you pay liquidated damages per merchant facility of the greater of 25% of your average monthly merchant service fee times the months remaining, or NZ$400, A$400, £400 or €400. Windcave can treat you as having terminated if you move your processing elsewhere. There are two useful exits: if Windcave raises your rate and the increase is not caused by your own change in average ticket size or keyed transactions, you can leave on one month's notice without the fee, and if it adjusts its fees or changes the agreement to your material disadvantage, you can leave on 30 days' notice. Equipment must be returned at your expense, within 30 calendar days in New Zealand, Australia and the UK and within 14 business days in the US and Canada, or you pay its fair value. The US terms are governed by Arizona law. Windcave's site also still hosts a 2021 US and Canada acquiring agreement issued with a different sponsor bank, Merrick Bank, which set a two-year initial term renewing for two years at a time, 90 days' notice of non-renewal, and an exit fee of the months remaining times your average monthly processing fees, plus its costs and legal fees. Its merchant FAQ now names Pinnacle Bank as the US sponsor, so ask which agreement you would sign.

Funds generally settle the next business day, and merchants can set a custom daily cut-off time. Windcave's terms let it suspend merchant services or hold settlement funds without advance notice if it believes on reasonable grounds that you have breached or may breach the agreement. Businesses that take payment before delivering goods or services may have to provide a financial reserve.

Reputation and complaints

Public review data on Windcave is thin, because it sells mostly to mid-size and large merchants through sales teams and integration partners. As of 1 October 2026, its Trustpilot profile is unclaimed and has eight reviews, all one-star, with a displayed TrustScore of 2.2. Trustpilot's score is weighted, so it sits above a plain average of 1.0. Several of the eight are from shoppers whose payments failed on a merchant's checkout rather than from Windcave's own customers. The merchant complaints describe a contract renewing without notice and a $1,500 penalty on an account the reviewer says was not being used, direct debits continuing after the contract expired, weekend settlement delays, a terminal delivered unconfigured, and slow support. We found no BBB profile for Windcave and could not retrieve a Google rating.

The best-known incident was on 5 February 2023, when a distributed denial-of-service attack on Windcave left retailers across New Zealand, including The Warehouse, Countdown and Briscoes, unable to take card payments, with intermittent outages also reported in Australia and Asia; services were restored the same day. Windcave's chief information officer, Mark Payne, said the attack lasted several days, with customer access affected for a shorter period, and that there was no hack, data breach or loss of data. Our searches found no regulatory enforcement action, class action or consumer lawsuit naming Windcave.

Who should use Windcave

Windcave makes most sense for businesses with real payments complexity: unattended operators in parking, vending, kiosks and EV charging; retail and hospitality groups in New Zealand and Australia that want terminals, online payments and acquiring from one company; and merchants operating in several of Windcave's acquiring countries who want one integration and one settlement relationship. Merchants already tied to a bank merchant account can use Windcave as a gateway and terminal provider without moving their acquiring. Small businesses that want a published price, quick self-serve signup and no long contract should look at flat-rate providers instead. If you do sign with Windcave, read the termination clause, get every fee in writing and note your term end date.