PayJunction
Is This Your Business?Author: Kaitlyn Short
PayJunction was founded in 2000 in Santa Barbara, California. They offer merchant services for credit card processing and pride themselves on their ethical billing approach and paperless payment technology. PayJunction's Smart Terminal allows businesses to capture electronic signatures and store all transaction histories in the cloud. This green technology reduces business costs and helps eliminate fraud while helping to protect the environment. PayJunction is a pioneer in remote signature capture, allowing for unprecedented protection from chargebacks on card-not-present transactions.
Top Ranked Companies
The Good
- Month-to-Month Service
- Virtual Terminals
- Mobile Processing
- Payment Gateway
- Ethical Billing
Month-to-Month Service
PayJunction does not appear to use any deceptive marketing tactics and seems to have tight controls in place to oversee and monitor their resellers. PayJunction is a Level 1 PCI compliant provider, a registered ISO/MSP of First National Bank of Omaha, a member of the FDIC and HIPPA compliant.
PayJunction offers a month-to-month contract that you can cancel at any time for any reason without penalty. Also, if your processing volume is over $25,000 per month, you can qualify for a free Smart Terminal. All you have to do is provide two recent months of merchant statements to receive a free, no-obligation savings report. By providing your merchant statments, PayJunction can identify any unethical billing practices your current provider is using, calculate your cost-savings for switching providers, and underwrite your business for a merchant account.
PayJunction does not charge a monthly fee, an annual fee or a PCI fee. There are no gateway monthly fees or per-transaction fees, equipment fees, month-to-month fees, or exit fees. Businesses receive one-business-day deposits and the funds are deposited directly into your bank account with no middlemen involved. However, if your processing volume is below $10,000 per month, they do assess a $35 monthly fee.
Virtual Terminals
By using PayJunction, you can process payments and capture electronic signatures for card-present and card-not-present transactions. Easily swipe or insert credit card transactions, or pay with Apple Pay using the Smart Terminal. Use the Virtual Terminal to key-in card-not-present transactions or process ACH checks. This is a web-based service that can be accessed from any computer, smartphone, or tablet with an Internet connection. The Smart Terminal is plug and play, allowing businesses to start processing paperless payments instantly.
The Virtual Terminal allows you to edit, refund, recharge, void or hold any transaction without inconveniencing customers with a return trip to your business. You will also enjoy comprehensive analytics for a deeper understanding of how your business is growing and evolving. Additionally, you can securely store your customers' account information for future payments. PayJunction's system tokenizes this data and stores it remotely, so your business benefits from increased security and reduced PCI scope.
Mobile Processing
PayJunction's mobile processing allows you to wirelessly process payments using your phone or tablet anytime, anywhere and your transactions are instantly available online in your Virtual Terminal – even if you don't have a smartphone. Laptop processing is also easily achieved through a simple Wi-Fi connection.
Payment Gateway
Because PayJunction is an all-in-one merchant account provider and payment gateway, businesses that have an e-commerce component can eliminate their payment gateway bill, streamline their service providers, and better understand their effective processing rate.
PayJunction provides a hosted checkout and full-stack API. This allows you to easily sell your products on your website. For larger e-commerce businesses, you can use one of PayJunction's third-party shopping car integrations.
Ethical Billing
PayJunction values long-term merchant relationships over making profit in the short-term; that's why the company and its employees focus so much on ethical practices when it comes to billing. Because the company values trust over short-term profit, it does not hide behind the excuse that everyone else is doing it when referring to unethical billing practices. PayJunction simplifies the billing processes, cutting out the complexities that often hide extra fees.
The Bad
- Markup Is high
Markup Is High
PayJunction's baseline percentage markup for new merchants who've yet to process credit card payments is a bit high at 2.26%; however, they also don't charge monthly fees or per-transaction fee markups. And if you are a smaller business with volume under $10,000 you will be assessed a $35 per month fee for their services.
Although this is the case, every prospective customer goes through an ethical check where PayJunction's team reviews their current statements and identifies any unethical markups, fees, or inflated rates to remove when they switch to PayJunction.
The Bottom Line
PayJuction appears to be an exceptional payment processing company and one that truly cares about its merchants and the environment, which is proven by their unique business model of paperless processing.
PayJunction provides incredible features such as ACH processing, a free Smart Terminal, a no charge hosted shopping cart, a fantastic reporting system and analytics, a versatile gateway and much more.
We highly recommend PayJunction for most businesses due to their excellent customer support, low complaints everywhere on the web for that matter, and their unique business model. However, if you are a low-volume business or a new business without any prior history, you might not qualify for a merchant account through PayJunction.
Just as with anything, you should spend some time researching and comparing several companies, their features and benefits, their rates and their reputation, before making any final decisions. And, of course, read the contract thoroughly and ask questions about anything you don't understand. Additionally, you should never hesitate to negotiate different terms, because many payment processing companies are open to negotiation for some of the terms of their contracts.
