Why we're doing this.

ProcessorWatch exists to give merchants the right information about their payment processor — and to help them find the information they need before they sign, not six months after they do.

No processor is perfect. Every one of them has issues you can expect to face in the first six to eighteen months of a contract: rate creep, statement complexity, auto-renewals, PCI fees, holdbacks, or slow support. Those aren't scandals. They're the reality of the industry. What matters is knowing which ones apply to you, and what to do about them.

We don't use star ratings. Stars flatten reality into a number. Instead, every profile in our registry leads with cons first, then pros, then real merchant experiences, then a plain-English verdict on whether you should be concerned.

ProcessorWatch is owned and operated by Nationwide Payments and Paynetic Technologies. We are not a payment processor. We are independent agents of a wide roster of processors — a broker of sorts — and our job is to place a merchant with the acquirer that actually fits their volume, vertical, and risk profile, rather than the one paying the highest referral at the moment. Because we sit across the industry instead of inside one processor, we can tell you what to look for on any contract on this site — including the ones we don't currently represent — and we don't accept placement fees, referral bounties, or paid boosts in exchange for softer coverage.

If we're wrong about something, we want to hear it. If you've had an experience with a processor that doesn't match what's on the page, we want to hear that too. This registry gets better every time a merchant tells us the truth about what actually happened.