QuickBooks Payments Overview
QuickBooks Payments May Have Overcharged You
If you accepted credit cards through QuickBooks Payments or any other credit card processing company between 2017 and 2019, recent changes to the law may entitle you to refunds of certain debit card and credit card processing errors and overcharges. See this post to find out if your were among the businesses affected and to learn how you can get your money back.
Intuit’s Built-In Payment Processing Service
QuickBooks Payments, formerly known as “QuickBooks Merchant Services” or “QBMS,” is a credit card processing option included with the QuickBooks accounting software by Intuit. The backend card processing services for QuickBooks Payments are handled by Intuit Merchant Services. We have decided to review QuickBooks Payments separately because the terms and conditions of a QuickBooks Payments account are different than those offered through Intuit’s traditional merchant accounts.
A Combination of Older Products
Intuit also appears to be gradually folding its GoPayment mobile processing solution into QuickBooks Payments under the name “QuickBooks GoPayment,” so merchants should be sure to clarify which product they are signing up for. QuickBooks Payments allows merchants to process credit cards via their QuickBooks accounting software, which also includes automatic bookkeeping of the transactions. Sasan Goodarzi is the CEO of Intuit, which is headquartered at 2632 Marine Way, Mountain View, California 94043.
QuickBooks Payments Review Table of Contents
- Costs & Contract: QuickBooks Payments (as part of QuickBooks Online) offers a month-to-month contract with no early termination fee.
- Complaints & Service: QuickBooks Payments has received more than 20 public complaints.
- BBB Rating: QuickBooks Payments does not have a profile with the Better Business Bureau at this time.
- Sales & Marketing: QuickBooks Payments does not hire independent sales agents and has not received any complaints about its sales practices.
- Rates & Fees: How Merchants Got The Best Rates With QuickBooks Payments
Our unbiased reviews are supported, in part, by helping you find highly rated merchant accounts. You can learn more here.
Our Opinion of QuickBooks Payments
A Decent Option for Existing QuickBooks Users
QuickBooks Payments is a very popular credit card processing service among merchants who use the QuickBooks accounting software. Overall, the costs and fees of the service are about average for the industry; however, QuickBooks Payments has no cancellation fee, which makes it an attractive option compared to long-term contracts. The service itself has relatively few complaints, but merchants are encouraged to read and understand the terms and conditions before signing up, and to take basic QuickBooks training via a course or self-study. It appears that merchants who properly educate themselves are unlikely to experience problems. Merchants are also advised to compare the service’s pricing to top-rated merchant account providers to determine which will provide better savings.
We rely on your feedback about QuickBooks Payments to keep this review accurate and up-to-date. Please take a minute to tell us about your experience. We and the small business owners of this world thank you!
About Phillip Parker
Thank you for reading my review. I hope that it has helped you with your research.
Why I'm Qualified to Write About Credit Card Processing and Merchant Account Services
I'm a former credit card processing sales director who left the industry because I didn't like how it takes advantage of small business owners. It feeds like a leech on businesses and thrives by imposing fees that are nearly impossible to comprehend. Seeing a need for change, I left and built this website help business owners better understand the industry, research merchant services providers, and get refunds of excessive merchant account fees. My experience of working "behind the curtain" in the industry, and using that knowledge for good, has resulted in millions of dollars returned to hard-working small business owners as well as enterprise-level companies.
From the time that I starting working in the merchant services industry to when I left to create this website, I've been on the pulse of payments for nearly 15 years. It didn't seem fair to keep this "insider" knowledge to myself. To lift the fog, I've reviewed hundreds of companies, read thousands of user reviews, and learned the pricing tricks of every provider. If you have questions about credit card processing, you can find the answers on this website.
Phillip Parker
Well, there seems to be a lot of hate on here and I am not one of them. First off, I have used several Intuit products for almost ten years including QB desktop, now an Enterprise user hosted by Right networks. We use full service payroll but have also used assisted in QB desktop. We have also used GoPayment or as now known, QB payments. Truly has been great for a long time and I appreciate calling one phone number to get several answers on different topics concerning payroll, merchant services, or QB in general.
Now for the negative, everything was going great until back in late June 2019 when some change occurred that started a headache. Now payment reports and user access is only through the mobile app as it was available in QB itself or the merchant website. The other main issue is that when payments upload into QB, they do not carry over the name as it always did and you either have a default, “other customer” or you manually type every single customer. This might not be a big deal for a tiny business, but we use these services for 5 locations and can easily process 150-200 transactions per day.
I am having the same issue as some of the other reviewers. I’m a newer small business and recently invoiced a client $4k. This amount was paid the same day by my client. For some reason I got a note saying the amount was disputed by my client’s bank. So, she paid again (2 days later). This time, I received an email saying my deposit needed to be reviewed. I shared all info that was requested. After a day, my client and I decided we’d use a different way to pay. So we told QBO merchant services to refund the money. ((they kept saying my customer’s address wasn’t correct – when she used a bank account to pay, so it shouldn’t matter) They said they would refund the $4k and it would take 10 business days for my client to receive these funds.
2 days after we planned for the return I called support to make sure it had been returned. This time, I’m told “we tried to refund your customer, but their bank declined the return.” I would have to wait 270 days or have my client’s bank do a dispute. I requested a document to share with my client showing that the funds were returned but declined by her bank. But, QB insisted they couldn’t share this info. Not even a simple email stating this. They only offered verbal confirmation. When I asked to have my client added to the call, they said it wouldn’t be allowed. So I said I will record my verbal confirmation…they threatened to hang up. So my client agreed to do the dispute. After an hour, her bank says they can’t do the dispute because it was an authorized transaction.
We all join a call to QB support to discuss. This time, QB says they didn’t return the funds “because of a business decision.” Liars! They told me 5 hours ago they tried to return the money.
When the bank representative for my client says, if you just authorize that I can use an “R31″ (special code for disputes), I can do that and we can close this out.” QB says, “We can’t authorize that.” The only option was to send a bank letter (on letterhead) saying that we couldn’t do the dispute due to federal regulations.
This post will help: How to Fight Chargebacks and Win
-Phillip
OK, I’m going to be possibly the only one who gives Quickbooks a decent review. I’ve used them for a couple years now and am generally pretty happy. However, I’m only taking payments of $250-$500, 5-10 times per week (photography services). Maybe I’m not having a problem because I deal with smaller dollar amounts than a lot of folks.
I do find that their interface “burps” once in awhile and messes up some of the accounting reports. But, as far as I know, I’ve received all of my funds in a timely manner.
Quickbooks Payment services abruptly cancelled our payment account after 2 years of continued service with no credit card complaints from customers. They are holding onto $5,500 of funds due to us (customer’s card was charged but we did not receive payment). They will hold that money for at least 270 days and will not pay us any interest. Their agreement absolves them from any need to explain why they did this or reserve any amount they deem necessary. Also cut us off immediately from their service so we have no way of receiving credit card payments effective immediately. Would not recommend their service to anyone. Read the fine print in the merchant agreement! Especially under reserves.
This post will help: How to Make Your Payment Processor Release Your Money
-Phillip
Wow. Stay away from QB Payments, and probably Intuit altogether. My bad experience has me looking at full accounting alternatives, I have such a bad taste in my mouth from this fiasco.
All started yesterday when I received two emails, one each to separate QB Payments account email addresses notifying me that my separate accounts had both been closed on the same day. No warning, no notice, no explanation. Nothing. Thinking this was some cruel, well-orchestrated joke, I logged into both QB Payments accounts, and sure enough, they were both marked as “closed”, with no options to get the accounts back into good standing.
Spoke to QB operations team, and even after supplying the correct information, they spent about 10 minutes trying to confirm me into the wrong account! Kept telling me someone else is listed on the account. Finally, after I sent them a copy of the email I received, they were able to confirm I was the correct person on the account.
They then informed me that Intuit made a “business decision” and closed my account. Nothing more, no “you exceeded your monthly transaction limit” (I hadn’t), no “you need to confirm with documents” (I already did), nothing. I’m a Small Start-up Business not even in full-scale production yet. We’re only getting a couple $100 eCommerce orders per month at this point, and apparently that’s too much of a risk for QB Payments to handle.
All they offered was “Sorry, you have to take your business to another payment processor.” Luckily, no payments were in the process of clearing, like some of the other horror stories I have read here. They aren’t holding onto my money for 270 days for no reason like the other reviews.
Completely unacceptable. As an IT Consultant with multiple clients using QB Enterprise editions, I will be talking them out of renewing their annual QB Enterprise subscriptions, and will start familiarizing myself with alternatives.
This post will help: Best Merchant Accounts for FreshBooks
-Phillip
My client has been using Quickbooks/Intuit‘s payment processing for about 8 months. This month, they processed a large batch (they are a growing company and there has been constant growth each month of about 35%) and Intuit held the batch. After about 20 days and lots of time on the phone and sending in documentation, signed payment authorization forms, 6 months of bank statements, etc, and the promise that they were working on releasing the batch, Intuit said that they were cancelling my clients’ payment processing account. There was no notice (Intuit immediately shut it down within minutes of telling us). Intuit made it so that we can’t even see any transactions in the payment gateway or any payment info on the customer in QBO. Intuit decided that they are not going to give the company the money AND they aren’t returning it to the customers!!! We have to contact each customer and tell them to dispute their transaction with their bank or credit card company to get the money back and then pay us again. Intuit also will not provide us with any details as to the payments that they are holding (they allowed transactions after that batch to process so we now need to wait and see what settles to figure out which customers are caught up in this mess). So with no notice, we had to set up an outside processing company. All of our Sales Receipts have to be reset up as invoices and we will have to manually post all of the payments. (Note – this company has NEVER had a chargeback).
READ INTUIT’S CONTRACT! They put it right in the contract that they can do this!
One other note – Intuit shut down every other payment gateway that was attached to the same owner as the one in question. He has several companies that are in varying industries. All of the accounts were immediately pulled.
This post will help: How to Make Your Payment Processor Release Your Money
-Phillip
I am very disappointing with QB Payments. We charged our clients for Rent through QB Payments, but The Intuit QB for some reason didn’t send us the money. I started the case (#137735696) and they give me very hard time to verify our organization and still the money is with Intuit. 5 months past.
This post will help: How to Make Your Payment Processor Release Your Money
-Phillip
I own a construction company. I started using the online payment option several months ago. At no time was I told that there was a transaction limit. The first two months I processed payments total approximately $60k without incident. The following month I had a single invoice in-excess of $50k that my customer could not get to go through. I contacted QB/Intuit and it was explained that a single transaction could not exceed $50k. They told me to have my client break the payment up into two payments. They did and it processed. The following month by complete accident I had three customers pay me on the same day for a total amount $94k. The payments were made on 1/24, its now 2/6 and I have still not been funded. I have spent countless hours on the phone trying to get this resolved. During this process I have been told that my limit was $5k for monthly transactions… never told this before and for three months my transactions exceed $50k? I have now had to provide customer contracts, bank statements… all to prove I am a business and have a bank (they’ve been depositing money in for 3 months).
I will say the customer service team has been polite they have no clue has to how their business works. There is a total disconnect between QB’s and Intuit. I wish I would have told them to return the funds to my clients and had them issue a check several days ago!
This post will help: Best Construction Merchant Accounts
– Phillip
I started QB Payment on Oct 2018, my payment of November got funded in 3-5 days, but since December 18, started holding until I called up on December 30; I finally could speak to someone in risk department on Jan 21, 2019. I was told it is on hold because I want to review ur account, asked many docs, provided them, didn’t reply, so called back and still has not released fund, saying it will be reserved for 270 days, if no any dispute, will be released after 270 days as per agreement. It is 44K, don’t know what to do. Sudden freezing ur money in the name of review and security, my god, I am so stuck.
This post will help: How to Make Your Payment Processor Release Your Money
– Phillip
I have the same encounter with QBO Payments. What did you do next? Please help
Go Payment app only operates for “admin” level users in QBO. So I’m either giving my admin user and password to my staff or giving them admin accounts where they can now see sensitive accounting data when they’re not supposed to. Bad move Inuit!!!
From The Editor
This Post Might Help: Best Mobile Credit Card Processing Apps
Beware! You are taking a risk with every transaction processed with Quickbooks payments. Quickbooks does not request enough information to properly and securely authorize transactions. Should the cardholder request a charge back it will be authorized back to the card holder stating the card was not present. You will then be out the funds with no way to rebuttal or go after the consumer. This is speaking from experience and having lost thousands of dollars to exactly this. Stick to requesting funds via Paypal or setup an online payment portal with some such as Moneris. These guys request all the proper information to securely authorize a credit card including the 3 digit security code(which Quickbooks does not) and some even us secondary security measures such as Mastercard/Visa Securecode.
Don’t loose money like I did.
Sincerely, Modula Racks
From The Editor
This Post Might Help: How to Fight Chargebacks and Win
Horrible! Horrible! Horrible! Last Thursday, my customer paid about 10 invoices using Amex via the online payment button in the invoices. The amount was near $10k. On Friday I received an email from Merchant Services stating that they are holding the entire batch due to “unexpected activity” , and that they required additional paperwork to release the funds such as 6 months bank statements? , detailed description of services on each of the invoices, information about my customer,etc. So, very unhappily, I took Monday off, sent all of the information as requested and called them directly several times. By the end of the day I finally got them to “release” the funds for payment, but it would take another 2 business days before deposited. Now it is the next Friday, and the funds are still being held and no money deposited… needless to say, I am extremely stressed about this situation. My company is very small and cannot afford for Merchant Services to withhold my income for no real reason (none was given to me). It cost me $6k to make that $10k. This has held up the operations of my company for an entire week and I have lost money. Today, I get to spend my entire day dealing with Merchant Services to get my money released, and find another software for accounting, payroll and payment services.
Intuit put us out of business! They unilaterally closed our account for what they deemed as excessive chargebacks. While they legally can do this, it came without warning. As a result 80% of our revenue was held as a reserve and they would not even allow us to refund our customers! We called them and said this is unfair to a small business to not even receive a warning, they said too bad we dont care. BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL, YOU COULD BE NEXT.
The realistic thing about intuit is that they are an ok service, but they have their drawbacks greatly. First is that their gateway is extremely slow, you’ll stand there waiting over 1 minute to process a credit card transaction. The problem with Intuit is that their chargeback department is a complete joke! Prepare to get your product and money stolen from anyone that disputes a transaction. Intuit’s chargeback department is a glorified paper pusher and does nothing to defend the merchant. If a buyer files a dispute on the 1st of the month, many processing companies will notify you 24-48 hours after words, with intuit 2 weeks after! So kiss your money and product good-bye. You have no chance whatsover of preventing the loss of products with Intuit. Ontop of that every processing company will refund you immediately after you reply to a chargeback, not Intuit, they will keep your money for another 2 months and you’ll soon forget it. Another thing is Intuits chargeback department promotes fraud. They will not help you in any way shape or form. You place things on your reply like you want evidence from the buyer to back up his claim, again unheard. They will ignore you and then allow the buyer to steal products by threating you with a $520 prearbtritation fee. Thats the biggest brip I have about this company, not to mention they are way to expensive and lack alot of tools that many processing companies have. Some staff is nice, but the underlying factor your a victim of any buyer tht wants to steal when you take Intuit processing!
QB doesn’t accept P-cards as payment. I have to get set up with another card processing source to accommodate all of our customers.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, but after 25 days using the service, I am going back to my prior processor. The problem is that they are “withholding” a client payment that one of my clients legitimately paid online, and that my client’s credit card approved. For some reason, Intuit Payments decided there was some problem, and required me to send them information about the transaction as if I was a criminal. They say they will actually speak to my client on the telephone before releasing the funds. Ridiculous! Who needs this aggravation. I am going back to my old processor ASAP, and will be reporting them to the SEC if they don’t release my money in the next business day. Business is tough enough these days without having your credit card processor hassle you! Sheesh! Stay away!
I have been using quickbooks 2013 and their credit card processing with no problems, however after their forced upgrade to the 2016 version which they were obviously not prepared to support,, credit card processing is not even possible. Amazingly intuit payment services computers could not even communicate with my company email. My personal email account for payment services is now having to be used and as of yet i have not been able to establish a password to even process credit cards. I wish i had never started years ago with quickbooks – even my cpa cannot believe how badly the company’s credit card services have become. My advise, Quickbooks 2016 may be ok, but stay away from the merchant services processing – it is a total nightmare.
I am extremely frustrated. Our deposits have been held for 8 days. It took me 3 days to actually get through to a customer representative. I was on hold one day with 2 different calls for over an hour, a second day over an hour, the third day someone finally picked up after more than an hour on hold. When I finally did talk to a representative, I felt like a criminal. All they could tell me was that the deposit was over our limit. I set the limit much higher when I applied and did not know they set the level lower.
I had to provide 6 months worth of bank statements and a sampling of customer invoices. They informed they would get back to me in 48 business hours and the funds would be released in about 3 days after that if everything was OK. It is now 3 business days after I sent the information requested and I have not heard from them. I am now on hold again for 50 minutes and counting. We are a small business and it is a hardship to have these funds held. I will probably move to another merchant once this mess is cleared up!!!
The sad part is, I don’t even know where to go to get help!
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Are you with Intuit? Learn how to resolve this complaint.
Intuit has lost all our respect as a small business. Their Quickbooks Online Payments system has held funds for almost 2 months past when our customer has received goods and per our invoice. We keep getting the run around and excuses. I don’t recommend this system to anyone who runs or owns a small business. Our previous merchant services always released funds within 48 hours, regardless of the amount or transaction details.
Beware there security is not good and there support is awful.
DO NOT use quickbooks merchant services! I have a small pediatric therapy business. I allow my clients to pay their invoices online. Recently, Intuit did a software update and due to a glitch the account number where they send my deposits was changed to a strangers account. Someone not associated with my business was receiving money from my clients. This good Samaritan was the person who caught this. I spent an hour and a half on the phone with merchant services the first time I called. They said they would resolve it. Three days later, I called because I had not heard anything. They had no information on my case other than that I called. I was furious. After 2.5 hours and speaking with supervisors, they promised to have my money in about 4 days. They claimed they had to do an investigation and asked me to provide them with the contact information of the good Samaritan that called me. UNBELIEVABLE!! To me this is unacceptable. It has been four days and still no money. It is beyond me how a tech company can be so sloppy. I have employees to pay, tax payments coming up and none of it matters. What is most infuriating is that it was their mistake in the first place. They are blaming the banks for the hold up, but I don’t believe that for a second. Companies credit and debit bank accounts all the time. We are talking thousands of dollars here. Once I get my money, I will be dropping all of my intuit services.
Not only are their fees and rates ridiculously higher than other processors, they cannot tell you how to remove the option once you have it installed if you decide to cancel.