Updated 2/4/2019: Victory Square acquired a little more than 30% of PayVida in February 2018, and the PayVida website currently promises that its “new game changing payment platform is coming soon.” The company still appears to be in a period of transition, and we will withhold a rating until it relaunches.
PayVida (payvida.ca) is a merchant account and point-of-sale (POS) solutions provider that appears to be headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company provides traditional retail processing, mobile payment acceptance, and a virtual terminal to merchants. PayVida is a reseller of Talech’s iPad-based point-of-sale products, but it appears to attach its own merchant account to its various POS solutions, making it similar to most traditional payment processors. PayVida is a registered MSP/ISO of the Canadian branch of U.S. Bank National Association and Elavon, and, according to multiple sources, is headquartered at 1350 Burrard Street, #182, Vancouver, BC Canada V6Z 0C2.
On May 31, 2014, we were contacted by a third party regarding allegations of unethical and possible criminal behavior regarding PayVida’s president and CEO, Robert Ronning. It appears that Ronning may have formerly operated under, or could still be operating under, the aliases of “Robert Zoost” and “Robert Raymond.” According to three articles published in 2008 by the Vancouver Sun (found here, here and here), a real estate agent named Robert Zoost (whose realtor profile can be found here) was publicly accused of misrepresenting his sales achievements in order to obtain a competitive advantage over other realtors. These Vancouver Sun articles also claim that Mr. Zoost had been suspended by the Real Estate Council of British Columbia, was the subject of lawsuits related to unpaid advertising expenses, and had repeatedly lied about his client base and sales record to the media and on his website.
A blog post from May 2008 (found here) contains a user comment filed in August 2013 stating that Robert Zoost had changed his name to Robert Ronning and is now working in the payment processing industry. The commenter explicitly names PayVida as Robert Zoost / Robert Ronning’s new venture. There is also some evidence that a Robert Ronning spent time in the intervening years working at Federated Payments (according to this profile) and Dominion Card Services (according to three Ripoff Report complaints).
As additional supporting documentation, we were able to locate civil cases naming Robert Zoost (screen capture here) and criminal cases naming both Robert Zoost (screen capture here) and Robert Ronning (screen capture here) within the British Columbia Court Services database. Dominion Card Services, PayVida, and Robert Zoost’s real estate agency are currently or were once based in British Columbia, while Federated Payments operates out of Ottawa, Ontario.
We reached out to Ronning regarding these allegations and he neither confirmed nor denied their accuracy. We consider this information to be unrelated to the quality of the products and service offered by PayVida; however, it is relevant to this review because the CEO of a payment processing company has access to sensitive personal and financial data of its customers, and this sort of behavior could be reflective of the company’s overall culture.
As an additional note, PayVida was the subject of a lawsuit filed by POS provider ShopKeep in January 2015. ShopKeep alleged that PayVida knowingly utilized ShopKeep’s trademark, promotional materials, and website content on its own website without authorization. The outcome of the suit is still pending. Details of the case can be seen here.
Key Points
- Sales & Marketing: PayVida appears to hire independent sales representatives but has not received any complaints about its sales practices.
- Costs & Contract: PayVida appears to offer month-to-month contracts with interchange-plus pricing and no early termination fees.
- Complaints & Service: PayVida has received fewer than 10 public complaints.
- BBB Rating: PayVida currently has an “A+” rating with the Better Business Bureau and has received two complaints in the last three years.
- Rates & Fees: How Merchants Got The Best Rates With PayVida
I have called several times trying to contact customer service – they do not have a direct line. They have an answering service that forwards messages, but payvida does not respond to those messages. Do not use payvida – they have no customer service. I’m going elsewhere
This post will help: Best Merchant Accounts for Great Customer Service
-Phillip
trying to recruit new outside sales reps all over the place … shut them down
For those people wondering if Ronning has changed I can say with certainty that Ronning is Zuest and he has not changed. I dealt with him when he was a realtor and have been dealing with him over the last 2 years on money he still owes me. He told me that he had a major undisclosed interest in Payvida but it was held in someone else’s name. And that if I waited a short while they were being bought out or merging and he would make millions and pay me. It’s one story after another and he simply is incapable of telling me the truth. Nothing has changed. I also wrote to various departments within Payvida to complain and it was a shell game with everything coming back to him.
Our company was with Moneris, we switch over to Payvida after they did a quote and showed us savings. but It wasn’t long after we had these extra PCI fees and then found out that Payvida settled out of court with Shopkeep POS after being sued. Shortly after our company directors voted to move away from a company like Payvida that who admitted stealing from another company’s website for their financial gain , as they felt strongly about the shaded past of the CEO Robert Ronning .
Then we experienced a few more problems when we tried to cancel , we were informed by Payvida that the cancel forms that we sent in were outdated and had to be issued from only their office only, even though we called Elavon first and then Payvida sent us was the exact same forms.
On top of this we received a very unethical slandering phone call from Robert Ronning who persisted in spewing his verbal diarrhea about other processing companies and who ended prolonging our account closure, costing us another month of service costs .
Lastly while Robert Ronning claims to be the founder our search of the Federal information on Corporations Canada showed Ryan Conrad Strauss is the only director listed and we found this peculiar.
I think you should you should post this on your website about Payvida owners and their business ethics in the payment card industry https://www.scribd.com/doc/252419803/Shopkeep-v-PayVida-complaint-pdf
We signed up and after the day we submitted the paperwork to the agent we were told to read the web reviews about the owner Robert Ronning/Zoost After we read this and decided it was not a good idea ,we called to cancel the next day and were told we couldn’t get the $298.00 sign up fees back. This is the type of issue we exactly wanted to avoid , it’s not our fault the CEO of PayVida has a checkered past and we shouldn’t have to pay to leave,it’s just like a cancel fee that hey say they don’t charge. We won’t do business with companies of this nature, especially ones who say thier different from the rest.
They can keep the money , they must need it to pay all the legal fees he has from his past dealings mentioned in the Vancouver Sun and here. I wouldn’t recommend this company if this CEO has any part of it.
As a merchant I have experienced great service by my sales person, however it was brought to my attention by my bank manager that Payvida has many items unjustly charged on different levels . These are their data scan fee, premium package as well a whopping 99.00 annual fee, so they came pointing fingers at my previous Credit Card provider and they do the same.
I called my sales person and when they came in , he couldn’t answer so I insisted I wanted to know now, he called the owner of Payvida Robert Ronning in front of me, and I could hear him say ” I’m in meeting tell them I will call back”, that was 2 months ago ,he never called back.
Obviously he didn’t want to face the music which leads me to believe his company’s scamming ways are part of his makeup that can’t be changed. Shortly after I cancelled with no problem and went back to my bank, who I know cost more but answer my questions.
yes, I see they keep on trying to hire new outside reps all the time. Bet this is just one of those revolving door types of companies.
We just got signed up with Robert Ronning at Payvida and are very happy with their overall level of service. I highly recommend their service to anyone who processes their payments online.
Randy
http://www.surewinmedia.ca
This story is obviously biased. How many companies are run with someone with a past. Everyone makes mistakes and everyone has something they are not proud of.
I am a very happy merchant with this company. They do what they say are going to do while none of their competitors even come close to their ethics, service, pricing or commuted emoloyees.
While the bank providers keep their pricing convoluted, dated terminals and cancel policies it’s about time a company forced them to change.
If you really want something better, PayVida is the best that’s out there. I am paying less then ever, while getting my money the next day. And whenever I need them, Michael is just a phone call away. I’d highly recommend this company to anyone.
I have had the best response from PayVida. Yvette came out to my store on a Saturday and got my account started up. I had my machine installed by Tuesday…best service ever !! Rates are amazing and three months in I haven’t had a problem at all.
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