Future Payment Technologies Review

According to the company’s public responses to merchant complaints, the standard Future Payment Technologies contract is an automatically renewing agreement of up to four years that includes a $495 early termination fee and a monthly minimum fee that takes effect after a couple of months. Because the company provides its sales agents with smart tablets and encourages them to collect signatures digitally, many merchants complain of never receiving full hard copies of contract terms. Merchants also report confusing cancellation policies that only provide a brief window of time for termination. With the exception of the use of tablets, these terms are consistent with those described in complaints about Crescent Processing and Park Central Company.

An alarming number of merchant complaints describe sudden increases in fees without notification and incomplete provision of paperwork at the point of signing. This may be due to the company’s use of a small (eight pages or so) merchant agreement, which is presented to the merchant at the point of signing, and a much larger (over thirty pages) program guide, which is only provided after a period of time or at a merchant’s request. It appears that many complainants found their unexpected costs embedded within this larger document, so merchants are encouraged to specifically request it. Additionally, we were unable to find any mention of a specific PCI Compliance fee among complainants, but this fee may constitute some portion of the sudden rate increases that have been reported.