ProMerchant
1.0
Author: Kaitlyn Short
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, ProMerchant LLC provides payment card processing services to U.S. businesses, small and large. It offers a bevy of card processing services that can fit just about any business. It offers payment processing solutions for the following types of businesses:
- Ecommerce
- Phone ordering
- Mail orders
- Retail
- Restaurants
- Mobile payments
- Point of sale (POS) – often in use at brick and mortar retailers and restaurants
- High-risk merchant accounts
For merchants that aren't quite sure what they need or have questions about options and pricing, ProMerchant's offers personal advice from well-versed industry experts. This can help to save you time and stress, knowing that you will end up with the best equipment or payment platforms for your workflow and the most cost-effective rate plan available.
Keep reading for pros and cons of working with ProMerchant to have your company's payments processed.
Top Ranked Companies
The Good
- High Approval Rates
- Upfront Costs
- No Long-Term Contracts
- Free Terminal Placement
- Emphasis on Support
- Fast, Painless Setup
High Approval Rates
ProMerchant has high approval rates. This company uses more than just your individual credit score to get you approved. There are no application fees and most approvals take a few hours, though it can be up to a couple days before you hear back.
This payment company has partnered with several banks and processors to offer a variety of payment processing platforms and solutions to be able to service most merchants.
Even businesses that are considered high risk can also be approved. ProMerchant has a network of 12 high-risk service providers for merchants that are well-known for having lots of credit card chargebacks. This means that high-risk merchants who may have had a hard time finding payment processing options in the past may have better luck with ProMerchant, just by filling out one (free) application. ProMerchant lists the following high-risk industries that it is able to serve, though some are on a case by case basis, as noted:
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Tourism and Travel:
Financial Services:
Pharmaceuticals and Dietary Supplements:
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Tobacco and Smoking:
Business Services:
Available on a Case by Case Basis:
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Misc. High-Risk Merchant Industries:
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Interchange plus rate structures are available even to high-risk merchants. This means ProMerchant can provide most high-risk businesses with competitive, transparent, and fixed-rate plans.
Upfront Costs
While other companies have issues with hidden fees on top of the quoted rates, ProMerchant strives to be transparent with each and every client. Additionally, pricing plan structures and fees won't change over time.
Even the name of the plans is transparent. Both are named Interchange Plus plans. Interchange stands for the base rate that merchants have to pay to the credit card companies like Visa charge merchants for processing customer credit cards for payments.
When it comes to pricing, rather than a tiered model, ProMerchant has two separate plans:
Interchange Plus Fixed Rate Plan
- Fixed transaction fee
- Fixed percentage rate
Interchange Plus Flat Monthly Fee
(For merchants taking in at least $15,000 per month in credit card sales)
- Fixed, all-inclusive monthly fee
Both plans offer month-to-month contracts, even the flat monthly fee plan that is aimed at more well-established businesses with consistent monthly revenue.
As ProMerchant says, its "rate structure avoids the guessing game and unpredictability found in tiered pricing models."
The pricing model that works best for you may vary depending on several factors:
- Type of business
- Per sale transaction amount average
- Anticipated monthly sales
The ProMerchant website states, "We are experts in payment processing, and we make sure that every single one of our merchants are set up with the correct rate structure that saves them the most money, period."
No Long-Term Contracts
ProMerchant's standard client contract term is month-to-month. This means that customers aren't stuck with a long-term contract and won't have to delve out any cancellation or early termination fees (ETFs).
Especially for newer or rapidly scaling businesses, and the flexibility to not be trapped in a long-term contract gives peace of mind, should things change.
Free Terminal Placement
Not all merchants need the same type of payment processing system. An ecommerce company will have different needs than a brick and mortar retailer and even restaurants or food trucks.
New customers who sign up for ProMerchant benefit from the company's free terminal placement plan, with no startup fees. Depending on the type of payment platform(s) your company needs, different terminals and tools are available through ProMerchant:
Point of Sale (POS) Systems
POS clients will get terminals from the Clover suite of products, like Clover Station, Clover Mini, and Clover Flex which accept EMV chip-based cards and smartphone Near Field Communication (NFC) payment, also known as contactless payment
Ecommerce
Ecommerce merchants are set up through the authorize.net platform with the authorize.net payment processing platform. They will also have access to a virtual terminal to enter sales made over the phone. authorize.net PCI DSS compliant and includes merchant access to features like the following:
- API access
- Shopping cart integration
- Virtual terminal to process sales over the phone, mail, email, or text
- Extra features from authorize.net:
- Fraud detection system — Choose your own specific filters that will automatically decline suspect transactions. Activity can be blocked based on IP address, IP velocity, and IP region.
- Invoicing — Merchants can email invoices with an easy link.
- Automatic recurring billing —For subscriptions and memberships, with monthly or other billing frequencies.
- Customer information manager (an internal CRM) — Where you can update customer information and shipping information, void transactions, or issue refunds.
- Account updater (paid) — To avoid unnecessary payment declines from expired cards, for less than 50 cents, Authorize.net can update customer card information.
Retail Merchants and Restaurants
New retail merchants that sign up with ProMerchant get free terminals as well. In this case, the options are from Verifone and PAX. Here's what you should know about the two options:
| Verifone VX520 | PAX A920 |
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Mobile Payments
ProMerchant offers mobile payment processing through the free PayAnywhere App for brick and mortar merchants and mobile businesses. Works through any Android or iOS phone or tablet, that uses a super flexible bluetooth credit card reader.
- Accepts EMV chip card payments, standard magnetic stripe cards, and NFC payments from smartphones and contactless tap and go cards.
- Customers sign with their finger on a smartphone screen.
- Even if you have a bad internet connection (or none), you can still take payments on your phone. The offline transactions just get fully processed when you get internet access again.
- Merchants can easily email or text customers their receipts.
- The online platform accompanying the mobile app offers merchants analytics, reporting, transactions, and offers customer service functions like returns, refunds, resending receipts, and export data into your accounting software.
Phone, Mail, Email, and Text Orders
Merchants that take mail and phone order payments can get access to two different payment processing platforms, Authorize.net, as described above in the ecommerce section, or Payments Hub.
With no monthly SaaS subscription costs, Payments Hub is a virtual payment terminal that allows a variety of customer transactions whether they are in-person, or by phone, email, mail, fax, or text. The Payments Hub platform also offers merchants easy reporting and analytics, as well as customer service functions like transaction verifications, resending receipts, voiding transactions, or processing returns.
Emphasis on Support
When you become a ProMerchant client, you are assigned a personalized Account Director and support team to help with your account, help select the most cost-effective solutions for your business, and even walk you through setting up and using your terminal or payment processor.
Fast, Painless Setup
Accounts can be approved within 2 – 24 hours. It can take a little bit longer to get your processing account up and running. Those using virtual processors can be up and running and able to accept card payments within 48 hours.
If you need to wait for your free terminals to arrive before you can start processing credit card payments, overnight delivery is available. So, retail and mobile merchants can be ready to go within 72 hours of first getting a quote from this company.
Merchants will be provided with setup instructions, but they also have access to their dedicated support team to help walk them through the implementation and onboarding process.
The Bad
- Quote Needed
- Free Quickbooks Sync for Authorize.net Discontinued
Quote Needed
Pricing depends on many factors with this company, and pricing levels are not disclosed online. You need to fill out a lead form with details about your business to get more information. ProMerchant offers two different pricing plans to help find the best, money-saving payment model for your business. The company emphasizes the value of its service experts who can help find you a customized plan and show you where your current plan is potentially costing you.
However, you will have to contact the company for pricing.
Free Quickbooks Sync for Authorize.net Discontinued
Users of the authorize.net platform through ProMerchant should note that while previously available, Quickbooks Sync integration has been discontinued. Automatic daily syncing of transactions to Intuit's QuickBooks has stopped for desktop and online versions.
However, Authorize.Net has offered a similar, fee-based system from partner CommerceSync. Once you register, daily sync transactions to your Quickbooks Online account are supported.
The Bottom Line
ProMerchant offers a variety of credit card payment processing options with transparent up-front pricing models, based on your specific situation. It specializes in varied solutions for a wide variety of merchants, even those in high-risk industries, who have had few, if any, payment processing options in the past. The company offers two payment structures, as well as contracts that are easy to cancel when needed, without hidden fees.
Interested parties can apply online or over the phone. However, once you become a client, you benefit from the company's 24/7 dedicated support access.
Have you used ProMerchant to handle your business's credit card transactions? Let us know about your experience with a quick review below.
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Rita Carnevale Wilmington, DE
4 years ago
Reply from ProMerchant
While everyone is entitled to an opinion, we cannot allow people to make false claims about our business or employees. Here are the facts:
1) At no time was this person or their business an actual customer of ProMerchant. Rita Carnevale (of "Neighborhood Mailbox" in Wilmington, DE) contacted ProMerchant for the first time on Friday 1/22/2021 and emailed and spoke with one of our representatives that day. After several calls and emails that same day, Rita expressed a desire (via email) to our representative that she would like to move forward and for him to send her an application. After that (keep in mind this was a Friday afternoon), our representative had to check out from work for the rest of the day to attend to a personal matter unexpectedly. When Rita did not hear back from our representative after a few hours on the same day, she posted a negative review on TrustPilot that said ProMerchant has, "HORRIBLE SALES SERVICE !!!". For most reasonable people, horrible sales service would not be defined as working with someone on a Friday and not getting a reply from them when they had to be away from their desk on that same day to attend to a personal matter. At all times, Rita could have called our phone number to work with any other employee or could have emailed our general mailbox through our website. While we are sorry that our representative couldn't help her once he left for the day, we do not believe this warrants a 1 star review.
2) ProMerchant cares deeply about our merchants and we provide excellent service and support to all of our merchants. We have a stellar reputation with all great reviews on TrustPilot prior to this one, which is why our Managing Director reached out to her via email to see how he could help and to look into the matter further for her. At no time, did he send disparaging emails or harass her. His communication was responsive, sincere and honest and he took time out of his Saturday to do so to see how he could help and she wasn't receptive to any of his professionalism, even while she was attacking his character in an unwarranted manner.
3) Rita's claim that our Managing Director posted fake online reviews about her business is libelous and without merit. In fact, when doing research right now to find and read reviews about her business (named "Neighborhood Mailbox" in Wilmington, DE), the most recent review on Yelp is from 7/1/2020 and it is a 1 out of 5 star review. Further, the most recent Google review for her business is from 3 weeks ago. It is important to note that her Google Reviews business rating is only 2.7 out of 5 stars with many scathing reviews about how she treats her own customers in a rude manner. There are a large amount of negative reviews, which says it all. The applicable saying in this situation would probably be, "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones".
4) Prior to the day she left a negative review for ProMerchant, she also attacked several other credit card processing companies on TrustPilot and many other businesses. The responses from those companies speak volumes and further validate our position. You can view her other negative reviews here: https://www.trustpilot[dot]com/users/5e403cc468c4b9fba1c5de95
5) Further research on this person on Google also brings up interesting court motions whereby in one such example the state of Delaware deemed that her insistent, unwarranted and abusive behavior towards her public defender warranted her public defender withdrawing as her counsel. They also stated that her egregious conduct clearly warranted a forfeiture of her rights to taxpayer funded counsel.
We care deeply about our customers and doing right by them, but we do have to defend our company when wrongfully attacked in this manner by someone who wasn't an actual customer of ours and is going off the rails in an unwarranted manner against many businesses including others on BestCompany. Our full set of reviews on TrustPilot, from actual contracted merchants, is a better depiction of our business.
Jan. 25th, 2021
