Leap Payments 2023: Card Processing Reviews & Complaints
(800) 993-6300 Company Overview
Leap Payments is a merchant account provider that was founded in 2005 according to the Better Business Bureau. Leap Payments is a former reseller of Elavon contracts, but it appears they are associated with WorldPay now. This is likely due to a conflict between Elavon and Leap Payments in 2020 over a large number of merchant losses. Leap is capable of placing both traditional and high-risk business types, but its marketing is much more focused on high-risk merchant accounts. According to the company’s website, it also offers merchants the option to choose a cash discount program.
Article Summary
Before we dive in, here’s a short summary of what we’ll cover:
- Leap Payments’ various payment processing services.
- The company has received some complaints but not many in recent years. Past complaints often mention unexpected fees.
- The Leap Payments contract is through WorldPay and may include some expensive fees.
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Leap Payments Payment Processing
Leap Payments offers credit card processing solutions for various types of businesses, including those considered high-risk. They provide retail merchant accounts, enabling businesses to process debit and credit card payments efficiently. Their services are designed to offer convenient payment options for customers without excessive transaction charges for the merchants.
High-Risk Merchant Accounts
The company specializes in high-risk merchant accounts, catering to businesses that are often deemed too risky by banks for credit card processing. Leap Payments aims to support the growth of these businesses by providing them with the necessary tools to process credit card payments securely and efficiently.
E-Commerce Merchant Accounts
For e-commerce companies, Leap Payments offers solutions to accept credit cards online without incurring high additional costs. This service is tailored to make online payment processing easy for customers and affordable for merchants.
Rate Lock and Transparent Pricing
Leap Payments guarantees a lifetime rate lock, ensuring that their rates will not increase for the life of the account. They use interchange plus pricing, which is presented as a transparent way to process credit cards. This approach reflects their commitment to straightforward and honest pricing.
Additional Services
Leap Payments offers a range of additional services, including mobile processing, next-day funding, online invoicing, point-of-sale systems, and a virtual terminal. They also provide equipment for businesses and cater to a variety of industries, particularly those in high-risk categories.
Location & Ownership
The company is a registered MSP/ISO of WorldPay, an FIS Global company, and lists its headquartered at 2100 Double Creek Drive, Suite 430, Round Rock, TX. However, other sites including the BBB list 5115 Clareton Dr UNIT 150, Agoura Hills, CA 91301. Will Detterman is the founder and CEO of Leap Payments and Jill Detterman is the CFO.
Table of Contents
- Costs & Contract: Appears to offer tiered and…
- Complaints & Service: Complaints number fewer than 10 on…
- BBB Rating: Has an “A+” rating and has received…
- Sales & Marketing: Does not appear to hire independent sales agents but…
Leap Payments Customer Reviews
Here's What Their Clients Say
Key Points |
|
|---|---|
| Total Online Complaints | <10 |
| Live Customer Support | Yes |
| Most Common Complaint | High Fees |
| Recent Lawsuits | No |
Low Complaint Total
We have located around 10 negative reviews about Leap Payments. At least 1 of these complaints accuses the company of being a scam. That Leap Payments review was left by a client who contends the company charged higher fees than they initially promised. Common themes among the company’s few public complaints include fund-holds on high-risk accounts, unauthorized fees being charged after an aborted signup process, undisclosed monthly and termination fees, and difficulty with the account setup process. These appear to mostly be caused by industry-standard protocols rather than intentional deception by the company, and most of these cases have received positive resolutions from Leap Payments. In addition, there are a wide number of positive Leap Payments reviews on the company’s website and several third-party review sites. If you have your own Leap Payments review to make, please do so in the comment section below.
Leap Payments Lawsuits and Fines
We have not found any outstanding class-action lawsuits or FTC complaints filed against Leap Payments. Dissatisfied clients who wish to pursue a non-litigious course of action against the company should consider reporting it to the relevant supervisory organizations.
Leap Payments Customer Support Options
The company offers phone and email support to its clients.
Leap Payments Customer Service Numbers
- (800) 993-6300 – Toll-Free Customer Support
- (800) 993-9635 – Fax
Other Support Options
- Customer support form on website
- [email protected] – sales
- [email protected] – Support
It appears that Leap Payments generally offers helpful customer support and maintains a low complaint total, but it does not quite rank among the top-rated payment processors for great customer service.
Leap Payments Online Ratings
Here's How They Rate Online
Online Ratings Summary |
|
|---|---|
| BBB Reports | 1 |
Under 5 Complaints
Leap Payments currently has an “A+” rating with the Better Business Bureau. The company has received 1 complaint on its BBB profile in the past 36 months.
What Merchants Say
It has also received 0 negative informal reviews although it should be noted that these reviews are not subject to verification by the BBB. A past review described odd requests for sensitive information:
I contacted Leap Payments for processing for my medical marijuana doctors referral business. Christopher Flores sent me a list of the required documents needed to apply. I submitted everything asked. First Mr. Flores never contacted me back. When I emailed him asking about the application, he wanted MY LOGIN DETAILS TO MY SQUARE ACCOUNT. YES, login such as my password *** user name (i have the email to prove it). I explained that i could send them a Square report but felt like after they received my information including my drivers license when has a photo, they increased requirements that wasn’t apart of what was initially requested. When I told him I have NEVER been asked for my account details and do not feel comfortable providing them, I never heard back from him. Now i have to change my bank account information, because they have it all. I have had to spend money on credit monitoring because they have all my personal and business informaton. All a waste of time and not a common courtesy to a least say that i wasnt approved. I **** not stop here to make sure this doesnt happen to anyone else.
Readers should understand which contract terms should be avoided so that they don’t end up in a situation like this.
An “A” Performance
Given the company’s nearly spotless complaint record, we agree with the BBB’s rating at this time.
Leap Payments Fees, Rates & Costs
A Closer Look at The Contract
Key Points |
|
|---|---|
| Cancellation Penalties | Yes |
| Monthly & Annual Fees | Yes |
| Processing Rates | Variable |
| Equipment Leasing | Yes |
Variable Contract Terms
There is not a great deal of information available regarding the standard Leap Payments contract. The company promotes the fact that it offers interchange-plus pricing, but it does not specify the typical markup that it charges on each transaction. The company also does not disclose its standard contract length, PCI compliance fees, monthly minimum fees, or early termination fees, so these figures may vary for each client. Leap Payments sells rather than leases its processing equipment, which is a better deal for most businesses.
As a reseller of WorldPay contracts, business owners considering the company’s services should familiarize themselves with that rate and fee structure. A typical WorldPay contract features rates of 2.90% plus $0.30 for swiped transactions and 3.30% plus $0.30 for those that are keyed in. The company’s qualified rate is slightly lower at 2.70% plus $0.30.
Virtual Terminal and Payment Gateway Pricing
In addition to its storefront payment processing services, Leap Payments also dedicates a portion of its website to advertising its virtual terminal and payment gateway services. The company lists Authorize.Net, NMI, BridgePay, and other gateway providers as payment processors for its virtual terminal. Pricing will depend upon which gateway provider a business utilizes. Additional Leap Payments rates and fees, including gateway fees, technical support fees, batch fees, and additional transaction rates typically apply to these e-commerce services.
Merchant Pricing Reports
We have located one Leap Payments complaint about the company’s pricing that mentions a three-year contract with an early termination fee of $295, but these figures are not confirmed by any other third-party reports. However, that early termination fee is in line with those included in a standard merchant agreement with Elavon.
Given the fact that Leap Payments offers high-risk merchant accounts, it’s likely that the company’s standard pricing does not compete with budget-friendly merchant accounts. We have found far more positive testimonials than negative reviews related to Leap Payments’ pricing and fees, so we will assign the company an “A” in this category for the time being. If you have any specific knowledge of the standard Leap Payments contract, please share that information in the comment section below this review. We also encourage business owners to check out our list of the providers of the best merchant accounts.
Leap Payments Employee Reviews & Sales Tacitcs
Should You Work For Them?
Key Points |
|
|---|---|
| Uses Independent Resellers | No |
| Telemarketing | No |
| Misleading Marketing | No |
| Discloses All Important Terms | No |
Inside Sales Team
Leap Payments appears to primarily market its services via a combination of in-house sales and strategic partnerships. There is no indication at this time that the company employs independently contracted sales agents, and we have found only a few Leap Payments complaints that accuse sales reps of failing to disclose fees. In one Leap Payments review (originally reported to the Better Business Bureau but since removed), the client stated that Leap Payments did not properly disclose its three-year contract term or early termination fee. The company responded by waiving the early termination fee and releasing the business from the agreement. Another Leap Payments review, found in the comment section below, states that the company’s effective transaction rate is much higher than the rates quoted. This does not compare favorably to our list of best credit card processors.
No Deceptive Quotes
In light of Leap Payments’ response to the first complaint, as well as the presence of a large number of positive testimonials about the company’s pricing and sales process, we will assign Leap Payments an “A” in this section. To its credit, the company advertises interchange-plus pricing to all of its businesses and does not appear to list any deceptive promotions in its official marketing materials. If you suspect that you are being overcharged by Leap Payments, you can double-check your pricing with a third-party statement audit.
Our Leap Payments Review Summary
Our Final Thoughts
Leap Payments rates as a reliable credit card processing provider according to all available information. The company advertises the most transparent rate structure to all of its clients and is the recipient of numerous positive testimonials, but we cannot find specific details related to its contract terms and fees at this time. Businesses are encouraged to compare the company’s pricing to that offered by top-rated credit card processors in order to obtain the best possible deal.
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Aden
Our entire experience with Leap Payments was awful, a classic bait and switch. We dealt with Cliff Zone and he used a series of shady tactics and we got ripped off as a result.
We signed on with them in January of 2019. After speaking with him on the phone we were excited about the low rate he promised us of 2.99%. We repeatedly asked him through email and recorded phone calls if 2.99% was the ONLY percentage we would be charged and have multiple confirmations from him that we would not be charged anything other than 2.99%, plus the small transaction fees we also agreed to. He was responsive and helpful in getting us on board and that is where it all went downhill.
After about 2 months we started noticing that the fees they were billing us were unusually high, far above the 2.99 that we agreed to, and that Cliff promised us we would be paying. We asked him where our transaction statements were and he started ignoring our emails. After 10 days, I emailed him again and demanded access to our statements and he finally responded that he would ask someone to help us get set up to access to the statement portal. I was shocked when I logged in and saw that we were being charged more than 6% per transaction, and not the 2.99% that Cliff assured us we would be paying. I knew that his ignoring my emails asking for statements was because there was something shady going on and I was right.
I immediately emailed Cliff and demanded an explaination and he ignored the email. After my second email he replied that he would order a “rate review” which I assumed was because they made an error and would be fixing and refunding the extra % fees they were charging us.
When I didn’t hear back for 8 days, I emailed again asking what the status of our fee refunds was and that is when my phone started ringing. On the call he explained to me that the rate he signed us up with was 2.99% ABOVE INTERCHANGE, and the above 6% we were being charged was correct, and that there would be no refund. I explained to him that looking back on the emails and calls I can see that he assured me repeatedly that we wouldn’t be charged any percentages more than 2.99%.
Cliff lied his way into making the sale, and then became evasive in order to keep us from finding out what was going on. He apologized and explained that it must have been a miscommunication. Fortunately for us, we have every phone call and email with him recorded (including him talking about slimy tactics to get around regulations with the credit card companies). Again, looking back on everything, and having an attorney as one of the owners of our business it is clear that Cliff used fraud and deceptive tactics to gain our business, costing us hundreds of dollars in additional fees we did not agree to. We will be pursuing legal action against Leap Payments (and also sending all the emails and recordings to Elavon) and possibly a class action as we are obviously not the first people they have done this to based on the other reviews.
Related: How To Get Lower Processing Fees Without Switching
Dylan
LEAP will charge you a whole slew of phantom fees. When you call to ask they say “they are charged by the bank” and cannot be reversed. CHOOSE ANOTHER PROVIDER
This post will help: Find and Eliminate Hidden Costs In Your Monthly Statement
-Phillip
Adrian Warren
Steve Matarazzo.
If you have plans of getting a merchant account in about 6 months. Work with this company. And don’t expect any explanation for the waiting. They don’t know what there doing. I countinusly send in paper work and all they say is I can’t work with an incomplete application. And when I ask what do you mean they just say it’s incomplete?… it’s it your job to obtain the merchant account?!
2. This guy also said he’s trying to get me a low risk merchant when any company I’ve worked for like mine is always considered high risk. So when he said that I was kinda worried. What is he lieing about on paper work to have this processed?
3. When asking. What is the wait and what he means by incomplete application they said they don’t like to be PRESSURED while working…
From The Editor
This Post Might Help: Best High Risk Merchant Accounts
Sandie Cardinale
DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!! They are thieves and liars. They are holding $9,000.00 of my money and was told that it was a loan. It is not a loan my customers paid for services from us. We are a small business and can not afford for them to hold this money. Amber Rivers said she will review my case on December 21,2018 As long as there are no charge backs she will determine then when I can have my funds released, This has been going on since August 2018. Cliff who helped set up the account said it would be okay to run all my charges we were holding til we started using this company that night. I listened to him and ran $9000.00 worth of charges. I was told they closed my account because it was fraud. We have been in business for 14 years we are not fraud. Apparently I should have never ran all of the cards in one night. If I wasn’t told it was okay I would have never done this. They do not care about you or your business. I am at a stand still and explained this to them they told me it wasn’t there problem. Cliff said he would call over to the bank. We are now in September I never received a call back from Cliff, No money from Leap and they have stopped taking my calls. Good luck to you if you decide to use this company. I will be calling the Attorney Generals office and BBB today to file a complaint.
From The Editor
This Post Might Help: How to Make Your Payment Processor Release Your Money
Brian Vaughn
Never and I mean never use Leap Payments contractors, we are a contractor and got screwed over big time. Bogus chargeback dispute started by American Express and sent to Leap Payments our card processor soon to be exprocessor and defendant in a lawsuit along with American Express. Amex started a bogus dispute making it look like our customer did it after our customer used his prepaid Amex cars to pay us for work we did. Amex tried to call the customer since it thinks everyone is a criminal so they could verify the charge of $772.50 he paid us with, but when they didn’t reach him after calling what looks like once and they didn’t even leave a voicemail and then they tried calling us but also didn’t leave a voicemail, Amex’s employee just opened a bogus dispute and put in reason as work not completed to customers satisfaction or not completed at all. Which is a completely made up lie by Amex. Our customer three way called us and Amex where Amex said what dispute we don’t show anything and said they would as a precaution send an email up to their chargeback department telling them the customer called in and said pay that charge and nothing is in dispute and that he didn’t dispute anything about that charge ever. Still Amex or Leap Payments pulled all the money out of our business Checking and over drew the acct forcing me to have to scrap money out of thin air to put our business acct back in the green. On top of that Amex slandered our business by making up the bogus dispute by putting reason as work not done or not completed to customers satisfaction. Our customer proved to us that he never even called them by the three way call we listened in on with him after he had called them once before earlier that morning. We are taking legal action against Leap Payments for refusing to even investigate the fraud by Amex we reported to them about this bogus dispute they opened and suing Amex for making up the fake dispute in the first place. Our relationship with our customer is damaged by these actions, our bank acct history and banking relationship with our bank has been damaged and we spent many hours on phone calls and emails and filing out the chargeback paperwork that Leap Payments demands be filled out to get our money back with in a week and a half during Thanksgiving week. Time that should have been spent enjoying the holiday with family that is visiting was instead spent scrambling to move money around to cover our over drawn acct at our bank and on the phone and on emails and getting the run around by Leap Payments and Amex. These companies pitch so much about consumer fraud and threaten you about the risk of being hacked and keeping customer card numbers or personal info, yet when you report fraud by one of their own they refuse to lift a finger, just shows you what you really mean to them as a merchant
Dan Sheehan
This company charges an average of 3.81% per transaction when you add in all of their “extra” fees. I would be happy to back that up with statements if you have an interest. The rate is very high for what they do.
Paul
Had an account. Faxed a cancellation request, was promptly called by the rep who said he had no problem cancelling my account because it was not generating them any income. Several months later I noticed I was still being charged for the account. Called the rep who said he wasn’t able to refund the charges and it was my fault for not noticing it sooner. He then said they never received the fax request to cancel, which was what prompted him to call me and tell me he had no problems cancelling my measly account. But like he said, it was my fault. I trusted him.
As the previous commenter stated, they are crooks.
Will Detterman
Paul – I’m very disappointed to learn about your experience here on a review site. As I don’t have any details on your situation due to the anonymity of this site so I really can’t respond directly as I don’t know the details of your case. I can tell you that we work very hard to make sure that we respond to client issues immediately and never hold your account hostage. We also have multiple people monitoring our incoming faxes so that we don’t miss requests, so it appears that the original close request was not received which led to your issue. I’m sorry that you had a bad experience and can assure you that we strive for perfection every day for all of our merchants.
Scott
These guys are bunch of CROOKS!!! They suspended my account out of nowhere when they already approved us to process with them and said we didn’t meet their approved business criteria and froze $1600 of our funds and said it could take up to 280 days until we are paid!!!! Don’t use this merchant account they are crooks and will steal your money!!!! They also go by Evalon as well! BEWARE!!!
Will Detterman
This merchant is selling Kratem powder which is an illegal substance in most states, of course they did not disclose this to us or our processor Elavon with their account application. When Elavon found out what they were actually selling, their funds were held and their account closed as we do not support businesses operating illegally. So it’s ironic that this merchant would call us “crooks”. While it’s disheartening to receive any complaints, this merchant should use their energy to sell legal products and focus on their business, not trying to bring down others.