Rapidly Increasing Complaint Total
As of our previous review, we were able to locate at least 10 T1 Payments complaints, a couple of which describe the company as a scam or ripoff. However, as of July 2021, we have uncovered a huge influx of negative T1 Payments reviews. Most of these claim that the company is an outright fraud, taking thousands of dollars from companies and closing accounts without providing services. Some complainants allege that they were given short (two days or less) notice about the company suddenly being no longer able to process their payments and then had their accounts closed with large amounts of money withheld. There are T1 Payments complaints that claim that the company can no longer be contacted, including one that even claims to have tried Donald Kasdon’s personal cellphone and found it blocking calls and voicemails. These complaints seem very clearly tied to the lawsuits the company is currently embroiled in. Other issues cited by complainants include higher-than-quoted fees, exorbitant termination fees, poor (even rude) customer service, and withheld funds. One T1 Payments complaint has received a rebuttal from company representatives, who insist that the merchant in question was engaging in excessively high-risk sales conduct. If you have your own T1 Payments review to make, please do so below.
High-Risk Merchant Concerns
In general, there seem to be two drastically different versions of events offered by T1 Payments and the high-risk merchants who complain about the company. Without full access to the details of each situation, we cannot speak authoritatively about what occurred, except to note that the company’s overall complaint total is rapidly increasing and concerning for a provider of any size. T1 Payments will receive a slightly lowered rating in this section until more definitive information is available.
T1 Payments Lawsuits and Fines
T1 Payments was both a plaintiff and a defendant in two 2016 lawsuits involving a now inactive company called Dermaktive, LLC. Dermaktive’s complaint against T1 Payments alleged that the company intentionally conspired to steal millions of dollars from Dermaktive, while T1’s lawsuit alleged that Dermaktive breached its merchant processing contract by intentionally defrauding consumers. T1 Payments also was involved in a 2017 lawsuit in which an undisclosed complaint against the company was filed by credit card processor Vantiv. Only the most recent of the three legal actions appears to have been resolved, but the available documentation does reveal that T1 Payments is a sub-ISO of Atlantic-Pacific Processing Systems.
2020-2022 saw a bevy of lawsuits brought against T1 Payments in an extremely concerning trend. These lawsuits include:
- Vida Divina suing T1 over $233,424 in termination fees. Vida Divina appears to be an “MLM”-style company.
- Diamond CBD suing “for violations of federal and state law including fraud, conversion, theft, breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, unjust enrichment and declaratory relief (the “Complaint”).” This appears to be related to T1 suddenly getting out of the Kratom business, and is in part over $649,311.73 in withheld funds.
- Onyx + Rose suing over alleged breach of contract and withheld funds in the amounts of $204,859.51. Onyx + Rose is also a CBD retailer, which appears to fit the information about T1 shifting its focus and allegedly leaving merchants in its former high-risk categories in the lurch. This lawsuit appears to have been settled out of court.
- A massive international lawsuit involving Dutch company Payvision (who is known to have processed payments for organized crime in Europe) and MLM company Beyond Wealth. According to a report from FinTelegram News: “Payvision is not allowed to act as acquirer in the U.S. due to regulatory and card network restrictions. Therefore, T1 Payments LLC established TGlobal Services Ltd in the UK which entered into a merchant agreement with Payvision already in 2015/2016. In addition, T1 Payments told all its US high-risk-merchants to also set up UK shell companies (conveniently T1 Payments offered a corporation building service). The U.S. business thus metamorphosized into EU business. Consequently, Payvision was able to do the payment processing for its U.S. merchant (a/k/a payment processor) T1 Payments LLC.T1 Payments (www.t1payments.com) apparently represented itself as a registered payment facilitator when it entered into a payment processor agreement with the U.S. MLM scheme operator Beyond Wealth Pte LLC, Utah, in May 2020. T1 Payments offered to process the customer payments for the MLM scheme. In reality, however, T1 Payments was not at all registered with any card network as a payment facilitator. Beyond Wealth learned later on that Payvision in Amsterdam actually processed all their business transactions. Payvision handled all transactions of Beyond Wealth as acquiring company via a sub-merchant account for Beyond Wealth under T1 Payments´ master merchant account. There was no agreement signed between Beyond Wealth and Payvision which transferred Beyond Wealth‘s incoming payments to the T1 Payments bank account with the U.S. Atlantic Capital Bank. T1 Payments paid it out to Beyond Wealth´s bank in Utah. At least this was the plan. A few weeks after entering into the agreement with Beyond Wealth, T1 Payments then did what many high-risk payment processors do – they terminated their high-risk merchant (being all of the sudden surprised about the high-risk of the merchant!), and retained a $4 million balance. Surprisingly, Beyond Wealth wanted to get its money and claimed that T1 Payments and its alleged co-conspirator in the theft, Payvision, have colluded and are fraudsters.”
- Ibuumerang, LLC., an MLM company from Houston, sued T1 Payments in 2022 over the same Payvision issue as mentioned above.
- A further 2022 suit was brought against the company by Gaia Ethnobotanical,LLC, though it is unclear what the suit concerns.
Obviously, these are all extremely concerning and appear to be part of a pattern of unethical and potentially downright criminal behavior on the part of T1. Considering the timing, the shutdown of the T1 website around the same time as this battery of lawsuits coming to light does not seem coincidental. We strongly advise all merchants currently with T1 to follow these developments closely, as there is talk on public complaint sites of a class-action suit. At the very least, we do not recommend any merchant sign up with T1 at least until the dust settles.
T1 Payments Customer Service Options
The company’s website offers an email address for customer support but does not specify a dedicated phone number, live chat, or any other options.
We have located multiple T1 Payments customer service numbers:
(866) 518-2216 – Toll-Free General Customer Service
(888) 209-3169 – Fax
The lack of multiple customer service options is far from the quality offered by top merchant accounts for customer service.
