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
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.
Payline Data
Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Payline Data is an excellent all-around merchant account provider that is also capable of serving enterprise corporations. The company’s products and features include traditional and tablet-based POS solutions, a QuickBooks-integrated online payment gateway, online shopping carts, mobile processing, payment tokenization, and customizable sales analytics.
Payline Data consistently receives positive reviews from merchants and typically offers interchange-plus pricing with no early termination fees. Our review of Payline Data gives the company an “A+” rating, while the BBB gives Payline an “A” at this time.
For more information, see the Payline Data website or call (888) 506-7812.
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.
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.
Dharma Merchant Services
Based in San Francisco, California, Dharma Merchant Services is a highly rated merchant account provider that specializes in serving merchants that process over $10,000 per month. The company’s retail-focused products and services include countertop terminals, a tablet-based POS system (via a partnership with ShopKeep), mobile device payment processing, an online payment gateway (Authorize.Net), and QuickBooks integration. Business owners might also find it appealing that Dharma donates a percentage of its profits to non-profits of its choosing every year.
Dharma scores highly on CPO and elsewhere due to its positively reviewed customer service, transparent rate and fee quotes, competitive interchange-plus rates, and fair service agreements. The Better Business Bureau 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.
3Delta Systems
3Delta Systems is a Chantilly, Virginia-based software provider that specializes in enterprise-scale B2B and B2G payment processing. Founded in 1999, the company offers level 3 line-item payment processing, credit card tokenization, a browser-based virtual terminal, fraud detection software, real-time credit card authorizations, FTP (file-based) batching, buyer-initiated payments, and a supplier portal, all of which are PCI-compliant, proprietary, and fully integrated with each other.
3DSI is not itself a merchant account provider, but its payment gateway can be directly connected to American Express, Elavon, First Data, Global Payments, Paymentech, TSYS, Vantiv, and WorldPay merchant accounts. This makes it extremely likely that 3Delta Systems can be paired with almost any merchant account provider available. Neither CardPaymentOptions.com nor the BBB has a review for 3DSI at this time.
Chase Paymentech
Based in Dallas, Texas, Chase Paymentech is the payment processing division of banking giant JPMorgan Chase. The company’s size enables it to provide merchant services for corporations of any size. Paymentech’s products and services include countertop, mobile, and e-commerce solutions like future-proof terminals, a proprietary payment gateway that integrates with multiple third-party services, payment encryption, fraud prevention tools, and chargeback management.
Chase Paymentech consistently maintains a remarkably low complaint rate in comparison to its very large size and appears to offer a wide variety of pricing options. Our review of Chase Paymentech awards the company an “A” rating at this time, and the BBB gives Paymentech an “A+.”
If your business offers merchant accounts and payment solutions to enterprise level businesses, please leave a comment in the comment section 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.
Phillip Parker