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.
Credit card processing is a complicated industry and enterprise level processing is its most complicated sector. In addition to the usual deceptive rates, hidden fees, and fund holds that all business face, large corporations must also address the organizational inefficiencies and security risks that come with accepting payments across multiple locations and departments. And because enterprise-scale businesses represent some of the most lucrative accounts that sales reps can land, they also need to be savvy negotiators if they want to keep costs down.
To assist you in your search for a capable enterprise processor, we have compiled a list of the top enterprise merchant account providers below. These processors specialize in payment solutions for very large businesses and market themselves as enterprise-level processors. Some of these providers offer all-in-one solutions that manage every aspect of a business’s finances—accounting, payroll, analytics, processing, etc.—while others only offer secure credit card processing for corporations. Similarly, some are optimized for large retailers and other consumer-facing industries while others are best for B2B and B2G businesses. If you aren’t sure which type of solution you need, you may want to consult our enterprise credit card processing guide.
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 specializes in international and e-commerce businesses. The company’s products and services include point-of-sale solutions, web hosting, online marketing tools, an online payment gateway and virtual terminal, mobile credit card processing, gift and loyalty programs, customer analytics, and business class email.
Host Merchant Services has received only positive feedback on public forums, with most reviewers singling out the company’s customer service for praise. The company 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.
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. PaymentCLoud offers wholesale rates that are ideal for enterprise-level merchants processing a high volume of transactions across disparate locations. Furthermore, PaymentCloud’s POS solutions provide enterprise-level merchants with a system that can synthesize information on inventory, sales, and employees from different locations. For these reasons, PaymentCloud is a great option for enterprise merchants.
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
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 enterprise merchants and offers a comprehensive dashboard for tracking all payments and customers.
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.
