What to Know Before Getting Started
Starting a New Business?
Selecting a credit card processor is often more complicated than most people expect. How much should you be paying in fees? Should you lease or buy equipment? Should you be locked into a service agreement for anything length of time? These considerations and several others are imporant to understand before signing up with any merchant account provider. Mistakes are easily made and can be very costly to your business. Along with seeing our top choices for payment services below, be sure to checkout this post to avoid common traps in the merchant services industry.
Considerations For Current Business Owners
Changing merchant accounts can be an expensive, complicated, and time consuming process. Are you really going to save as much as promised? Do you need to buy to new equipment or sign new lease agreements? Will there be other less accountable costs such as those associated with employee retraining? Before selecting one of our choices below, you may want to consider renegotiating your fees with your current payment processing vendors using the help of a contingency-compensated consultant. It can result in a dramatic decrease in costs without the pains of switching. In some cases business owner have also obtained substantial refunds of prior overcharges along with saving thousands in future processing costs. See this post to learn more about this little-known alternative to changing merchant account provider.
Health care providers frequently need to accept debit and credit card payments, but not in the same way that conventional retailers do. Medical clinics collect payment in several different ways, including online, over the phone, and in person. They also typically have a need for one-time and recurring billing options as well as customer tracking and secure, offsite data storage. It is essential that doctor’s offices and other health care providers have reliable point-of-sale equipment as well as secure administrative systems in order to minimize wait times and keep patient information private. And, as always, it’s best to obtain these services for the lowest possible cost.
These specific needs are served well by some merchant account providers and not as well by others. In order to help you find providers who specialize in health care solutions, we’ve compiled the following list of the best merchant account providers for healthcare. This list includes companies that provide transparent pricing, positively rated customer service, and products that are perfect for health care locations. These providers can offer on-site payment solutions as well as e-commerce processing for health care providers, and each company will have its own specialties. We recommend that you contact a few of these providers and compare quotes in order to find the best pricing and service package for your clinic.
Our unbiased articles are supported in part by helping you find highly reviewed merchant accounts. You can learn more here.
Why These Merchant Account Providers
Host Merchant Services
Host Merchant Services is a Newark, Delaware-based merchant account provider that is well-suited for hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare providers. The company’s products and services include point-of-sale solutions, web hosting, business class email, an online payment gateway and virtual terminal, and mobile credit card processing. Host Merchant Services specializes in e-commerce solutions for healthcare organizations that rely on a strong web presence.
Host Merchant Services has received only positive feedback on public forums, with most reviewers singling out the company’s customer service for praise. Host offers interchange-plus pricing with no early termination fees to all of its merchants, meaning that users will enjoy the most transparent pricing model and can cancel service without penalty. The BBB gives Host an “A+” rating, and CPO also gives the company an “A+.”
For more information, visit the Host Merchant Services website or call (888) 727-4538.
PaymentCloud
Based in Woodland Hills, California, PaymentCloud is a merchant account provider that specializes in serving standard to high risk business types. The company’s products and services include point-of-sale solutions, mobile phone swipers, an online payment gateway and virtual terminal, EMV-compatible terminals, and merchant cash advances. These features allow merchants to accept payments on-site using their phones as well as through online billing. For those reasons, PaymentCloud is a good option for healthcare merchants as it allows them to easily deal with patients directly and facilitates the payment of their outstanding balances online if they can’t be paid in total at the time of their visit. Furthermore, the secure portal offered by PaymentCloud’s virtual terminal protects confidential patient payment information.
PaymentCloud provides a dedicated account rep to all new merchants for the life of the account. The company has not received any negative complaints on consumer forums, and it customizes its pricing according to each merchant’s business type and processing history. The BBB does not maintain a profile for PaymentCloud at this time, but CPO gives the company an “A.”
For more information, visit the PaymentCloud website or call (888) 506-7859.
Fattmerchant
Best Overall Option
Active since early 2014, Fattmerchant is a merchant account provider leading the industry’s move toward flat-rate, subscription-style pricing. The company’s products and services include EMV-compatible countertop terminals, a virtual terminal, an online payment gateway, an online shopping cart, mobile phone processing, QuickBooks integration, online invoicing, and recurring billing. Fattmerchant is capable of serving all standard-risk healthcare environments and offers a comprehensive dashboard for tracking all payments and customers.
Fattmerchant Pricing
Fattmerchant offers multiple pricing plans with different rates. Merchants can select either a plan that charges a flat fee on all transactions or a plan that charges a fixed monthly fee plus a fixed per-transaction dollar amount above interchange. In other words, merchants can choose whether or not they are charged a percentage markup on each transaction. Fattmerchant currently has an “A” rating on CPO and an “A+” rating with the Better Business Bureau.
For more information, visit the Fattmerchant website, or call (866) 397-9826.
Our unbiased articles are supported in part by helping you find highly reviewed merchant accounts. You can learn more here.
Why These Merchant Account Providers
Helcim
NXGEN Canada
Other Merchant Account Options
The providers in this section may not have been researched as thoroughly or may lack a quality that prevented them from being listed above. We have listed them here to provide a broader view of potential merchant account options. Are you a decision maker with your company and believe that you should be listed below? Tell us here.
CDG Commerce
CDG Commerce is a merchant account provider that can supply payment processing for in-person, mobile, and online health care offices. Headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia, CDG Commerce’s products include a free payment gateway, custom reporting, QuickBooks integration, AVS, automated fraud alerts, and chargeback notifications. The company has been providing merchant services since 1998 and has accumulated numerous positive third-party reviews in that time.
CDG Commerce offers month-to-month agreements with no early termination fees to its merchants, but rate quotes will vary depending on each merchant’s business type and processing history. We currently give CDG Commerce an overall rating of “A+,” and the BBB also gives CDG an “A+.”
For more information, see the CDG Commerce Website or call (888) 393-1079.
Payline Data
Payline Data is a Chicago, Illinois-based merchant account provider that is a great all-purpose option for any type of health care business. The company’s products and services include a QuickBooks-integrated online payment gateway, traditional POS equipment, mobile processing options, a virtual terminal, payment tokenization, and cloud-based business and inventory management.
Payline Data was founded in 2009 and has maintained a clean complaint record in the years since. The company regularly receives positive feedback on merchant forums and is able to offer interchange-plus pricing with a month-to-month agreement and no early termination fees in most cases. Our review of Payline Data currently awards the company an “A+” rating, while the BBB gives Payline an “A” at this time.
Dharma Merchant Services
Based in San Francisco, California, Dharma Merchant Services is a highly rated merchant account provider that places a major emphasis on social consciousness and community outreach. The company’s products and services for healthcare providers include countertop terminals, mobile device payment processing, an online payment gateway (Authorize.Net), and QuickBooks integration. Medical service providers may also find it appealing that the company donates a percentage of its profits to non-profits of its choosing every year. Dharma is best suited for merchants who process over $10,000 per month, which makes it a good option for most healthcare providers.
Dharma scores highly in our review and elsewhere due to its positively reviewed customer service, transparent marketing practices, competitive interchange-plus rates, and fair service agreements. The BBB currently assigns a rating of “A+” for Dharma Merchant Services, while CardPaymentOptions.com also gives the company an “A+.”
For more information, see the Dharma Merchant Services website or call (888) 404-1237.
Cayan
Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Cayan is a large all-purpose merchant account provider that is able to serve any type of health care business. The company’s products and services include debit and credit card processing, an online payment gateway and virtual terminal, traditional POS equipment, tablet-based POS, mobile processing, and payment tokenization. Cayan’s proprietary, cloud-based Genius customer engagement platform also enables health care providers to accept secure payments even when their local network is down, generate custom reports, and retain useful information about repeat patients.
Cayan’s offers custom pricing depending on each merchant’s size, business type, and processing history. However, the company generally offers month-to-month agreements with no early termination fees. Cayan currently has an “A” grade on CardPaymentOptions.com and an “A+” with the Better Business Bureau.
For more information, see the Cayan website or call (888) 506-8019.
Helcim
Based in Alberta, Canada, Helcim is another great all-around provider for health care businesses of any type and size. Helcim’s products and services include POS equipment, a virtual terminal, and an online payment gateway for retail, mobile, and e-commerce healthcare merchants. Helcim offers most of its physical processing hardware for a flat upfront purchase price and charges a flat monthly fee for the use of its desktop computer-based virtual terminal. Most clinics will find the company’s virtual terminal to be the most cost-effective and useful solution.
Helcim offers interchange-plus pricing with no early termination fees to all of its merchants and is rated highly by all third-party reviewers. Our review of Helcim gives the company an overall rating of “A+,” and the BBB also gives Helcim an “A+” at this time.
For more information, see the Helcim Website.
If your company provides payment processing services for the health care industry, please leave a comment below or contact us through our contact page in order to get listed in this article.
About Phillip Parker
Thank you for reading my review. I hope that it has helped you with your research.
Why I'm Qualified to Write About Credit Card Processing and Merchant Account Services
I'm a former credit card processing sales director who left the industry because I didn't like how it takes advantage of small business owners. It feeds like a leech on businesses and thrives by imposing fees that are nearly impossible to comprehend. Seeing a need for change, I left and built this website help business owners better understand the industry, research merchant services providers, and get refunds of excessive merchant account fees. My experience of working "behind the curtain" in the industry, and using that knowledge for good, has resulted in millions of dollars returned to hard-working small business owners as well as enterprise-level companies.
From the time that I starting working in the merchant services industry to when I left to create this website, I've been on the pulse of payments for nearly 15 years. It didn't seem fair to keep this "insider" knowledge to myself. To lift the fog, I've reviewed hundreds of companies, read thousands of user reviews, and learned the pricing tricks of every provider. If you have questions about credit card processing, you can find the answers on this website.