Specializing in Hard-To-Place Business Types
Headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, PaymentCloud is a merchant account provider that specializes in credit card processing solutions for high risk business types. The company does not publicly list any information about its founding date or its executive leadership, but some of the copy on its site makes reference to its work over the past seven years. Additionally, there is evidence that the company is a reseller of Electronic Merchant Systems.
Multiple Partner Banks
PaymentCloud’s acquiring bank is not listed on its website, possibly because high risk credit card processors tend to work with multiple acquirers. The company’s headquarters are located at 16501 Ventura Blvd Ste 300, Encino, CA 91436. PaymentCloud’s CEO is Shawn Silver, the former vice president of high risk at iPayment.
Acquisition of Paysley
In October 2020 PaymentCloud acquired the majority shares for contactless technology startup Paysley. Paysley utiltizes custom QR codes and markets itself as an easy payment solution for fundraising, donations, recurring rent payments, and businesses utilizing text message payment requests.
PaymentCloud Review Table of Contents
- Costs & Contract: PaymentCloud offers a contract of variable length that not charge setup or cancellation fees. The company also relies on Authorize.Net as an online payment gateway.
- Complaints & Service: PaymentCloud has received fewer than 10 public complaints.
- BBB Rating: PaymentCloud does not have a rating with the Better Business Bureau at this time.
- Sales & Marketing: PaymentCloud appears to hire independent sales agents but has not received any complaints about its sales practices.
- Rates & Fees: How Merchants Got The Best Rates With PaymentCloud.
After searching for a merchant account that was willing to work with my business in the firearms accessories industry, I came across PaymentCloud after being referred from Authorize.net. PaymentCloud seemed to be a great solution due to their reasonable fee structure and willingness to work with me. Another big plus is the fact that they allow for more popular online wallets such as Apple Pay; a big plus for a business like mine that is 100% online based.
The process from learning about PaymentCloud, to applying, to being accepted was coordinated by Neal Hamou, who was there with me every step of the way. Neal worked patiently and diligently with me through the process and I am glad to have him in my corner. Every question I had was promptly answered and every hurtle was met with a quick fix from Neal. I could not imagine a quicker or more painless process or a better person than Neal to work with.
Chase,
We’re glad to hear that your experience with PaymentCloud was so good. They rank as one of our best merchant accounts for good reason. Could you please provide us with the name and location of your business so we could authenticate your feedback?
Upon be recommended by Stripe to execute services from Payment Cloud. I was immediately told by the agent that they could help me with my merchant solution. I was never ever told about any fees that would incur which put me at risk for my household expenses. I was coming from a FREE solution to one that has a substantial month fee.
I also recommended this service to a fellow colleague and she also was not told of these fees and had to freeze her merchant account.
As business owners we have many fees coming out of our account on a monthly basis. When we are not informed ..then this put our household expenses at risk.
There is a fee of $40-$65 dollars fee for 24 months attached. That I believe should be explained before entering into any discussions about a merchant solution. To break this agreement is a hefty $595. Although I am steaming mad about this I prefer to do this than pay more for the duration of 24 months.
I did read the contract. It I was my understanding that these fees only incurred when a transaction was made. I hadn’t a clue that $64 a month would be charged if I didn’t use the service after 90 days. SO UNFAIR.
Anyway I wanted to write this review to warn people to make sure they ask what the fees are and could they get it in writing.
I hope this helps someone.
This post will help: Best E-Commerce Merchant Accounts
-Phillip
Good Afternoon Sharon,
We appreciate your feedback and take your concerns very seriously here at PaymentCloud.
Stripe trusts PaymentCloud to ease the transition off of their platform because we take great pride in our customer service and transparency in what can be a very confusing payments environment. Our team cares about your business and knows how hard it can be to find a provider, quickly, when you are losing an account to keep your business running smoothly.
We know that “high risk” is an unfair term for most business owners and work with solutions that mirror your previous experience as closely as possible. However, accounts of this type require substantial underwriting and risk considerations that will usually be reflected in slightly higher fees. I apologize if these fees were not explained to your satisfaction by our account representative during the on-boarding process. I appreciate the opportunity to make our team better.
I’d like to make every effort to ensure your experience with PaymentCloud was a good one and am working with our bank to waive the cancellation fee on the contract, we will be reaching out shortly to confirm. If you have any further questions I would love to chat, please reach out directly.
-Mike Wright
COO PaymentCloud
Have been with Paymentcloud for a couple of months now and I am beyond happy with them! Special shout out to my agent Brandon Conlan, that really knows what he is doing. He was very helpful from the beginning and is continuing to do so as we are going on. Very happy and definitely the right choice. Will continue to be their customer even with non-high-risk business in the future.
was approached by payment cloud to process my credit card payments for which i wasn’t interested and turned them down and from there every day i received harassing emails from them asking me to explain why i wasn’t interested and other ones pretending i had approached them and kept sending me sign up form links. eventually i had enough and told them to leave me alone and that i was an Australian business with no interest in an American provider with crazy high fee’s they then turn around and sent me an email stating thanks for my enquiry but they don’t deal with Australian businesses. If you deal with a melissa mullis block her straight away she is one piece of work and i’m still gobsmacked by how she tried to make it look like i approached them and that they were turning me down at the end. was just so uncalled for and childish, avoid these guys at all costs they also hide a lot of information like a buffer they put in place and as many times as i asked they refused to give me information on the buffer and the higher fee’s involved when the buffer was reached plus they will hold your money for as long as they like also. Dodgy as shit company and terrible staff and crazy high processing fees it’s much cheaper to use paypal credit card processing
Hi Michael,
We do not do any outbound lead generation, all of our inquires are opt-in. I apologize for any unwanted communication you experienced with one of our representatives. At PaymentCloud, it’s always our goal to listen to our merchants and it seems we may have missed the mark in this case.
As for your other comments about pricing and processing times, these rates and timelines vary by bank. Because we partner with various processors to accommodate all industries, credit card processing rates and deposit timeframes are unique to each account (with factors such as risk, processing history, and credit score). In fact, PaymentCloud has no hand in freezing or withholding any funds from our merchants. If anything, we are the ones that advocate on your behalf for the release.
As you stated, we cannot work with international businesses and therefore would not be able to help you connect to one of our domestic partnering banks. We wish you luck in your business endeavors.
Put my business back months. Terrible.
This is my first ever online review. I had to post this to let other people know to AVOID this company.
They wasted 4 months of my time with promises they couldn’t deliver.
I’m based in the UK, with a US LLC and I sell supplements, all of which are considered high risk which I understand and I’ve had issues with merchant processers before because of it, but usually they give me a no straight out of the gate as to avoid wasting everyone’s time.
Ohhhh no no no, not PaymentCloud, they waited 4 months to tell me.
The intial application was successful and took 6 weeks to get onboarded, during this time I had to continuely chase up as their customer service is nothing short of woeful but I know these things take time so i was patient.
At week 6, I was given the green light by the acquirer bank, all that needed to be done was implement the merchant API into my websites. I use Shopify(Yes, the $1bn T/O eCoommerce Platform) and Clickfunnels(The Largest Funnel Platform Globally.) I had told PC multiple times that I use these platforms and even their Chief Of Technology told me that ‘We integrate with Clickfunnels’
Well…
After 10 weeks of terrible communication, and me asking for updates on a weekly basis I was told that they DO NOT integrate with 2 of the largest platforms out there.
The reason I was given was that I was the first person from an international perspective they had helped and that their third party API had let them down.
This has put my business back months.
If you are reading this and thinking about signing up, don’t. Even if you are in the US, their customer service and communication is some of the worst I’ve seen.
If you trust these people with your customer’s money, on your head be it.
We appreciate you taking the time to leave this detailed review and for the opportunity for us to take this feedback as an opportunity to make our team better. I would like to address and possibly clarify a few points and hope that, although we were not able to help you with credit card processing, we can come to an understanding.
First and foremost, we specialize in US based domestic credit card processing and rarely venture into international markets because we do not have the relationships built and proven solutions that we have in the US market. Because of the relationship with our referring partner, our relationship manager went above and beyond to source a solution for UK based CBD businesses that we were assured checked all the boxes that you required.
We did in fact get you a live merchant account and were told that your development team would be able to use the information provided upon approval to make the appropriate e-commerce platform connections. At that point I think we ran into a couple of issues; first, that connection required custom work, and second that work was outside of your scope and you did not have additional developer support to help.
At that point, we brought in both our lead developer and our CTO to help troubleshoot the issue. We absorbed all of the costs to make every attempt at building the connections you needed. Unfortunately we received very little – almost zero – feedback and support from the processor who owned the API connection and could not find a way on our own. I apologize for the time this took, but please know that we left no stone unturned and pursued every avenue to try and make this work, at no cost to you.
Please know that we are doing everything we can to remedy the situation, and as a result of your experience have decided not to move forward with the solution you were placed with. We strive to maintain a very high standard as experts in the ecommerce space inside the US with almost limitless integration capacity and unmatched customer support – that includes hundreds of Shopify merchants every month.
I will personally apologize on behalf of the processing solution that so much time and effort was spent on something that did not come to fruition. We take full responsibility for going out on a limb, but if you have one takeaway please know that we were truly committed to helping you at any cost. If there is anything further we can do to help please don’t hesitate to reach out directly.
Chase,
I truly appreciate the kind words. We really value your business and look forward to a lasting relationship. As always, any problems that arise big or small please reach out to me and I will handle. Looking forward to seeing your company grow to new heights, no doubt it will.
Payment cloud only offers credit card processing for companies that sell CBD topicals, no ingestables. Just got that information from a phone call with them today.
We can now accept all forms of CBD :)
I wanted to give a shout out to Brent Bunting for giving superb customer service! He was always very kind and professional. Brent would answer our questions and if he did know the answer he would research and find out the answer instead of just “saying I can’t help you”, like most people do. He always took the extra step to help. I am a dentist and I owned my practice and I wish I would have had an employee like Brent. I would have had the confidence that things were getting done correctly and efficiently. I really appreciate all of Brent’s efforts and wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors. Keep him around………..he is a great employee!!
Hi Joni,
Please reply to this comment with your business name and location in order to authenticate your testimonial. Thanks!
We have a vaping business and had many issues getting an online processor until we met Faviola who walked us through every step. She responded to us within a day and even walked us though changing our domain name. I’d highly recommend working with Faviola.
I just spoke with my rep at Payment Cloud and they are not processing for CBD other than topicals at this time.
This post will help: Best CBD Merchant Accounts
-Phillip