To choose the payment processors that are the best fit for small business merchants, we selected seventeen providers and analysed their pricing and fee transparency, essential and advanced features, customer support, reviews and recognition from customers and third-party reviewers and looked at the provider’s offerings. The five best-rated services made our final list.
Pricing
For pricing, the most important aspect we looked for was a transparent fee structure, such as for keyed transactions; swipe, chip or tap transactions; and online transactions. We also looked at other fees, such as subscription discounts, BACS processing and international payments. If the provider offered online quotes, that also weighed into our scoring, which accounted for 20% or the final score.
General features
The general features that we considered essential for a merchant account service provider to have include a reporting dashboard, invoicing, data exports, contactless payments and integrations with third-party software. General features accounted for 20% of our weighted scoring.
Advanced features
Some advanced features we looked for include offering fast deposits, Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance, a variety of customer support options, such as live chat, blog, phone and/or a knowledge base, and even more detailed invoicing options. We weighted advanced features at 25% of our total score.
Third-party reviews
How others viewed each merchant account service provider also played a part in our rankings. We turned to third-party review sites, including Trustpilot and Capterra, and looked at what real users had to say about each service and how they scored them. Those who scored higher (4 and higher on a 5 scale) did significantly better in this category. These reviews accounted for 20% of the total score.
Expert analysis
Finally, our experts took everything discussed above into consideration, looking specifically at a provider’s popularity and any stand-out functionality it offered, to come up with our own analysis. These final criteria make up 15% of the total score.
