Top 5 Best Payment Processors

The first on our list is Payline — an excellent choice for a mid-sized business, although it serves businesses of all sizes. It can also be found in most industries, which even includes some that might be considered as high-risk merchant types. However, the service itself has managed to build quite a reputation for honesty and transparency, which is not often a norm in the processing world.

Setting it up and using it is easy, and all you have to do is choose one of its standardized pricing packages that will suit your business. You will easily find your rates, fees, as well as terms of use, right there on the website. Another interesting thing to mention is that this particular processor gives back to the community through its Payline Giving program, which collaborates with numerous charities. It donates once per month, every month.

With it, you will have quite a few processing solutions to choose from, including Merchant Accounts, high-risk accounts, non-profit accounts, virtual terminal, payment gateway, and many more. Each comes with its own monthly, yearly, transaction, or other fees, depending on the plan and purpose. It has customer support, but it is only accessible Monday to Friday during working hours, and via email, which is one of its biggest flaws. Other than that, it is a great service to choose and use.

Next, we have Stripe, which is an excellent choice for online businesses. It is especially good for international merchants. It is fast, very easy to implement if you have a bit of developer experience, and its prices are relatively low.

By using its API, you would easily be able to create your own e-commerce environment, or even partner with one of the e-commerce platforms that will help you build a store — if you can’t do it yourself and do not have developers. Of course, this will come at an additional cost, but if that is not the problem, you will end up with quite great results. Unfortunately, Stripe has one big flaw, which is the fact that it does not process PayPal payments. With PayPal as big and popular as it is, this could be an issue, depending on your plans.

Apart from that, Stripe is a great choice, excellent for online credit card processing. There is no monthly fee, nor a monthly minimum. It works with American Express, Visa, Mastercard, as well as Discover, and its transaction cost is significantly lower than that of PayPal itself.

Halfway down our list, we have Authorize.Net, which is among the oldest and most popular payment gateway providers for eCommerce. The company has been operating in the sector since 1996 and was acquired by CyberSource in 2007. Then, in 2010, CyberSource itself got acquired by Visa. During all this time, Authorize.Net became a permanent payment gateway for over 400,000 merchants.

One thing that you must understand about it is that it is not a merchant account provider, but a payment gateway that also offers several ancillary products and services. If you want a merchant account, they can set you up with one, but they will have to employ a third party service themselves to do so. Authorize.Net serves merchants in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Europe.

When it comes to its fees, this service can be quite pricey. The account set up fee itself is $49, and then you have to pay a monthly gateway fee of $25. Next, it has a $0.10 processing fee per transaction and a $0.10 daily batch fee. This prices can be different if you choose to employ the service for getting a merchant account, though.

Of course, we could not create a list like this and not include PayPal, which is the best-known and most trusted processor around the world. It is very easy to use, and it will give you access to countless customers, as pretty much everyone has an account these days. The company itself claims to have over 250 million active accounts, and that it collaborates with over 17 million merchants.

It is very easy to set it up, and even easier to use. You can get it up and running pretty much immediately. It is also very transparent when it comes to fees, prices, terms, and alike. Additionally, it won’t even try to lock you into a contract with early termination fees.

Not only that, but it comes with an unreal number of offered integrations, as everyone wants to work with this company. However, there were many reports in regards to its customer support, which is apparently not that great. Also, it is not recommended that you use it for high-risk industries.

Finally, we have 2Checkout, also known as 2CO. This is a service that has been working as a third-party payment processor since the early 2000s. Staying true to its name, the service allows customers to check out and pay as soon as they complete their online purchase. It looks similar to PayPal, and even Stripe, likely as part to appear trustworthy and take a part of the market share.

It is partnered with numerous booking platforms, shopping carts, invoices, and more, meaning that there is a fair possibility you even met it before.

Another reason why this is excellent service is the fact that it works in numerous foreign countries. In fact, it claims to be available in more than 200 markets. It is likely among the best options for a global payments tool, which is not something that you will encounter often. It is also quite transparent, but just like PayPal — it is not a good choice for high-risk merchants.