CRITICAL UPDATE:
We have recently lowered Stax by Fattmerchant’s rating due to the company refusing to provide its customers with detailed account statements regarding individual transactions and the associated Interchange fees. Fattmerchant claims to pass along base Interchange fees with no markup; however, refusing to provide detailed statements makes it impossible to verify that the company is doing this accurately or honestly. We cannot recommend Fattmerchant until the company provides this transparency to its customers in widespread and easily accessible format.
A Pioneer of Subscription-Style Pricing
Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, Stax by Fattmerchant is a subscription-style merchant account provider that was established in 2013 but began operations in early 2014. The company was previously known as “Sunshine Payment Services” and is a reseller of NPC/Vantiv (now Worldpay).
Stax by Fattmerchant Payment Processing
Like Payment Depot or Transparent Merchant Services, Stax by Fattmerchant specializes in charging merchants a flat monthly fee and a fixed per-transaction fee with no percentage-based rates. Fattmerchant offers merchant accounts via mobile phone payment processing as well as a robust virtual terminal for e-commerce merchants. The Stax mobile app is available on iOS with a just-released Android app. It can be used as a standalone solution or as part of an integrated omnichannel platform that includes both card-present and card-not-present processing. Additionally, all transactions, drafts, catalog items, and inventory updates made in the mobile app are synced in real-time across all devices, including Stax by Fattmerchant’s virtual terminal.
A Powerful Competitor to Stripe
Stax by Fattmerchant’s e-commerce solution offers many of the same features as the popular payment aggregator Stripe but with several notable improvements. While both services offer an API for developers, a month-to-month contract, and integrated mobile payment options, only Stax provides a lower per-transaction fee, a customer support phone line, next-day funding, and QuickBooks integration. Stax’s linked mobile solution supports invoicing, manually keyed-in transactions, saved payment methods, and camera-scanned cards. Merchants are also able to add on a Bluetooth reader or terminal if they choose to accept card-present transactions.
Stax by Fattmerchant Location & Ownership
Fattmerchant is a registered ISO/MSP of Fifth Third Bank, Cincinnati, Ohio. Fattmerchant is located at 618 E South St Suite 510, Orlando, FL 32801. Suneera Madhani is the founder and CEO of Fattmerchant.
Video Summary
Stax by Fattmerchant Review Table of Contents
- Costs & Contract: Offers a month-to-month contract through Vantiv/Worldpay with no early termination fee and…
- Complaints & Service: Has received fewer than 10 public complaints regarding…
- BBB Rating: Has an “A+” rating with the Better Business Bureau and has received 29 complaints and 29 reviews in regards to its…
- Sales & Marketing: Does not appear to hire independent sales agents and has not received any complaints about its…



4 Responses
AMEN to lowering the rating. The lack of ability to provide detailed statements is what initially prompted us to discover thousands in additional fees we were being charged by FattMerchant/Stax. I couldn’t understand how with our previous provider we got detailed statements of every fee, interchange rate, etc. but with FattMerchant/Stax they simply say they can’t provide this.
I left a detailed review of our experience here: https://www.trustpilot.com/submitted/review?correlationid=5761d94f-d13b-4b5f-920a-4e729439f56c
Not sure if outside links are allowed, but I can provide emails, documentation, bills, etc. detailing our unfortunate experience with FattMerchant/Stax. Really disappointing.
Beware: We signed up and never received our terminals. However, was being charged monthly fee of $209. We tried to cancel and ask for refund but the refused to refund. Eventually, we got more terminals but we called to return them and was told that I would receive return shipping labels in an email. Never received that either. I thought we could get this resolved but we were ignored and monthly drafts just piled up to upwards of $2900.00. We just had to stop payment on the drafts to our account. Probably going to seek legal advice. Never once used terminal, never once used service, never once received any cancellation notice from them even though I cancelled. I think it is illegal to charge for services/goods never received or used.
Fattmerchant has been really inconsistent and ultimately we chose to leave them for Dharma after several bad customer service experiences. For us Fattmerchant could never manage the most base level customer service actions- like updating a bank account – something that should be super easy was met with inaction, mistakes, and delays so we almost left them a month into signing up but we liked the interface and figured it was a bump. However a year later and we received a threatening letter from WorldPay the merchant services because Fattmerchant failed to update a 3d cart storefront we were setting up and never could once Covid caused layoffs so we cancelled it- but low and behold we found out from a collections person that Fattmerchant had created a completely separate MID for our storefront, failed to update the bank account to it and then when we closed the storefront we never built they forgot to tell World Pay that too so monthly charges accumulated for over a year that we never were told about. World Pay said Fattmerchant had access to the billing breakdowns and could not explain how not even the account manager assigned to us knew anything about charges accumulating. But Fattmerchant blew it and when we found out and reached out- we asked for a supervisor to our account manager to contact us and they never did.
Our account manager even assured us in writing that upper management was aware and she could not explain why they were not reaching out to resolve this. We had a collections reported to our credit because of the incompetence of Fattmerchant to simply update our account information which they had confirmed in writing repeatedly they had done when they had not.
I am disgusted with them. They have a good interface but when it counted Fattmerchant was terrible. No one took responsibility. No one helped. And worse, they even tried to suggest it was our fault for “not completing a PCI compliance” but I contacted World Pay and challenged that and they said it had nothing to do with PCI and everything to do with Fattmerchant not updating our account so yeah, in our experience, Fattmerchant aka Stax, sucks.
This is the first processor where I understand my fees. I also have been paying about half of what I was paying with my previous processor.