Payment facilitators vs. dedicated merchant accounts

You don't own your Stripe account.
It can be shut down at any time.

Secure Your Business. Own Your Account.

You board as a sub-merchant on Stripe's MID, so the agreement with the acquiring bank is theirs, not yours — and the MID, the underwriting and the processing history don't move with you if it ends.

Compare my effective rate Read the comparison
PayFac headline rate
2.9% + 30¢
Flat, and non-negotiable
Dedicated MID pricing
Interchange-plus
Cost pass-through, plus markup
Underwriting timing
After vs. before
Where freeze risk comes from
Who owns the history
Them vs. you
Portable negotiating leverage
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01 — Simplify

One relationship, one phone number,
one team that knows your account.

Processing gets complicated at the moment something goes wrong. Simplify means the people who underwrote you are the people who pick up.

Personal service, start to finish

The same team from the first conversation through the life of the relationship. You are not handed from a sales rep to a support queue once the account is boarded.

A direct line to risk management

You can talk to the risk professionals who make decisions on your account, rather than filing a ticket about them. Reserves and holds are the exception here, not the default posture.

Domestic US support

Support staffed in the United States, reachable during the hours you are actually taking payments.

Transparency into your analytics

Approvals, decline reasons, settlement timing, fees and chargebacks in one place — so you can see what your processing is doing without asking anyone to run a report.

02 — Supply

The account, the hardware,
and the capital behind it.

A merchant account on its own is not a payments operation. Supply is everything that has to work alongside it.

Practically every business type

Including high-risk verticals that PayFacs decline or offboard outright. If a model can be underwritten, we will tell you what it takes — and tell you plainly when it can't.

Competitive interchange-plus pricing

Priced as interchange plus a disclosed markup, so you can see the cost floor the card networks set and exactly what sits on top of it. Your rate depends on your MCC, volume, ticket size and processing history.

Hardware, gateways and proprietary tools

Clover® POS, payment terminals and self-order kiosks through our TouchSuite® partnership — fit to the way you already sell, rather than forcing your operation to fit the processor.

Memberships and recurring billing

Built for subscription and continuity models: smarter retry logic, account updater, and the descriptor control that keeps recurring charges from turning into disputes.

Access to working capital

Merchant cash advance through TouchSuite® FlexCapital during the relationship — a purchase of future receivables rather than a loan, subject to separate underwriting and approval. Not a commitment to lend.

03 — High-risk industries

Secure, scalable payment
solutions for high-risk industries.

Your business is unique, and so are the challenges you face. Operating in a high-risk industry doesn't mean compromising on the quality of your payment solutions. Whether you're in topical CBD, firearms, supplements or another regulated market, we build processing that is secure, compliant and scalable around how you actually sell — and we have been underwriting several of these verticals since before they were mainstream.

Industries we serve
Topical CBD & hemp Online gambling Firearms & ammunition Nutraceuticals Telemedicine Vape & e-cigarettes Vitamins & supplements Many others

Why these solutions work for high-risk businesses

Specialized underwriting

A team that already knows your vertical's objections, so onboarding is a conversation about your model rather than an education. Approval still rests with the sponsoring acquirer.

Fraud and chargeback mitigation

Machine-learning fraud screening on the transaction before it settles, plus dispute management and chargeback alerts — the difference between a ratio you manage and one that closes the account.

Compliance expertise

A PCI DSS-compliant platform and the tooling to keep pace with card-brand programs as thresholds move, including Visa's VAMP and the dispute-monitoring programs that decide whether a high-risk MID survives.

High-volume capacity

Built for peak-volume traffic — launch days, promotions and seasonal spikes — so a surge reads as revenue rather than as a risk event.

Global reach

Cross-border acceptance and multi-currency processing where your customers actually are, subject to the acquirer's approved regions for your model.

04 — eCommerce

Power your online store with
scalable payment solutions.

eCommerce is fast-paced and competitive, and payments are where a good funnel quietly leaks. Processing that integrates with the stack you already run — secure checkouts, clean integrations, and the reporting to see what your payments are actually doing.

Platforms and gateways
WordPress / WooCommerce Shopify BigCommerce Magento PrestaShop Authorize.Net NMI Funnelish Custom builds

Why these work for eCommerce businesses

Frictionless checkout

Fast, familiar payment interfaces that keep buyers moving through checkout, with support for major credit cards, digital wallets and alternative methods including Apple Pay and PayPal.

Global scalability

Multi-currency support and cross-border acceptance so you can sell into new regions without standing up a separate processing relationship for each one.

Secure transactions

Processing on a PCI DSS-compliant platform, with tokenization and fraud screening protecting both your customers' card data and your chargeback ratio.

Comprehensive analytics

Purchasing behaviour, sales trends, approval and decline performance in one place — so you can see which payment problems are costing you revenue rather than guessing.

Flexible integrations

Plug into Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and custom-built storefronts, through either a hosted checkout or a full API integration depending on how much of the flow you want to own.

05 — Solutions

Gateways, accounting, and
every channel you sell through.

The integration layer — what connects the merchant account to the systems you already run.

Payment gateways

Authorize.Net and NMI rather than a single mandated stack, with tokenization and hosted or API-based checkout depending on how much of the flow you want to own.

Accounting system integration

QuickBooks, Xero and FreshBooks, plus ERP platforms including Odoo and Zoho — settlement and fee data landing in the systems your finance team already closes the books in.

Omnicommerce

Card-present, online, mobile and recurring under one account and one set of reporting — multiple payment options without multiple disconnected relationships.

06 — Effective rate

The only number that settles it:
total fees ÷ total volume.

Headline rates hide fixed fees on one side and per-transaction cents on the other. Put your real volume and average ticket in.

Your business
Transactions per month
The dedicated-MID quote

Defaults are illustrative. Replace them with the numbers on the actual proposal.

Side by side, per month
Illustrative
Flat-rate PayFac
in fees
Interchange-plus MID
in fees
Percentage fees, MID
Per-transaction fees, MID
Fixed monthly fees, MID
Verdict at this volume

Where the two lines cross

Holding your average ticket and this quote constant, interchange-plus overtakes flat-rate at roughly:

07 — What the pitch leaves out

Three things a switching pitch usually skips.

The headline rate isn't the cost

Traditional ISOs often carry monthly fees, statement fees, PCI non-compliance fees and gateway fees — sometimes inside multi-year contracts with early termination penalties.

"Faster funding" is situational

Improved funding is not guaranteed. It depends on your MCC, your risk profile, and the acquiring bank — get the timeline in writing or treat it as marketing.

At low volume, flat-rate usually wins

Once fixed fees are added in, the flat-rate simplicity of a facilitator often nets out cheaper than interchange-plus. The calculator above shows where that flips.

Send us one processing statement.
We'll send back the arithmetic.

A written effective-rate comparison, a full fee schedule, and a committed funding timeline for your MCC. If flat-rate is still cheaper for you, we'll say so.

Request a rate review Run the numbers first