Clearly Payments Review

• Merchant Accounts: With Clearly, you’ll receive a full-service merchant account with your own unique Merchant ID number. These accounts are underwritten by Fiserv, Elavon, and other backend processors. The company primarily uses an online application form and claims that accounts can be approved in as little as one business day.
• Cannabis & CBD Payment Processing: While Clearly Payments doesn’t hold itself out as a high-risk provider, it does support cannabis dispensaries, CBD retailers, and neutraceutical merchants. It’s important to note that these industries are only supported in Canada, where these products are already fully legal. Support for these products in the US is unlikely due to the current convoluted maze of conflicting federal and state laws in that country regarding these products. It’s also likely that you’ll pay higher rates than the standard ones disclosed on Clearly’s website.
• Next-Day Funding: Clearly states that transactions will settle in less than one day, and this appears to be a standard feature of all accounts. While you probably won’t have to pay a separate fee for faster funding times, the cost of this same- or next-day funding service is most likely bundled in with your monthly account fee.

• Mobile Payment Processing: For accepting transactions on the go, Clearly offers Elavon’s Converge Mobile app and a choice of compatible card readers for in-person transactions. Hardware choices include either the Ingenico iCMP, which connects via Bluetooth and accepts magstripe, EMV, or tap-to-pay (i.e., NFC-based) payments, or the MagTek aDynamo swiper. The latter is an older, basically obsolete model that only accepts magstripe transactions and requires a headphone jack to connect to your device. The Clover Go card reader is also available.
• Countertop Terminals: For traditional brick-and-mortar locations, Clearly offers a wide variety of standard countertop terminals. Primary choices include smart terminal models from Ingenico, Poynt, and Clover (specifically, the Clover Flex). These terminals all feature color touchscreens and support for magstripe, EMV, and NFC-based payment methods. The company also still offers several older models from Ingenico that lack “smart” functionality but still support EMV payments and cost less, making them good choices for a small business that only accepts the occasional credit card payment.
• Point Of Sale (POS) Systems: If your business needs a large POS system to operate smoothly, Clearly offers either the talech POS system or the popular Clover POS line. If you want to select a Clover system, either the Clover Mini or Clover Station is available. Be aware that most Clover products require a monthly software subscription fee in addition to the basic cost of the equipment.

• Payment Gateway: For eCommerce merchants, Clearly offers a proprietary payment gateway that includes a host of standard features to ensure PCI compliance and protect you from online fraud. Highlights include a customer information vault, a hosted payments page builder, support for recurring billing, automated fraud detection features, and full data portability. Clearly’s gateway supports transactions in 65 currencies and integrates with a wide variety of third-party products, including WooCommerce.
• Virtual Terminal: For mail order or telephone order businesses (or those that just need to manually key in a transaction occasionally), Clearly includes a free virtual terminal with your account. Clearly’s virtual terminal can run on a computer, laptop, or tablet. You can also add a compatible card reader to accept in-person transactions as well.
• Online Invoicing: For businesses that rely primarily on invoices to get paid, Clearly Payments offers a full-featured digital invoicing system that allows you to send invoices via email. Invoices include a link to a hosted payment page to accept payments. The system comes with other common features, such as automatic payment reminders and automatic reconciliation of paid invoices.

• Analytics & Reporting: Clearly’s proprietary payment gateway offers a variety of analytical features to keep track of how your business is doing. It also can automatically export data to QuickBooks.
• Merchant Loans: Like most merchant services providers, Clearly Payments offers loans (actually merchant cash advances) to merchants looking to launch or expand their business. Amounts available range from $5,000 to $500,000 and a loan can be approved and disbursed in as little as 24 hours.
• Payments Consulting Services: Clearly Payments also offers a wide range of consulting services to help you make good decisions about how to run your business. Expert advice is offered on payments strategy, regulation, licensing, PCI compliance, vendor selection, market research, and other topics.

Clearly’s interchange-plus pricing option allows you to separate your interchange fees (which are paid to the card-issuing bank) from the company’s markup. Although the interchange fees themselves have a lot of variability, you’ll always pay the same markup to Clearly. Like most providers offering this type of pricing, Clearly Payments sets different rates based on your monthly processing volume and whether a transaction is card-present (retail) or card-not-present (online or keyed-in). The company offers substantial discounts on rates at higher monthly processing volumes.

Clearly Payments is also one of the few providers in the payments industry to offer membership pricing, which can save high-volume businesses a lot of money on their credit card processing costs. Membership pricing eliminates the percentage-based portion of the processor’s markup in exchange for a fixed monthly subscription or membership fee. While this fee can seem high, this type of pricing can actually save you enough money to pay for itself through lower overall processing costs.

For large businesses processing over $250,000/month, Clearly Payments also offers a customized pricing option. The company does not disclose specific details of this pricing option, but you can expect to receive lower interchange-plus (or membership) rates and pay a higher monthly fee based on your average processing volume. Because customized plans can be negotiated, you might also be able to secure additional benefits by asking for them.

Extra Costs

Clearly promises you will not pay the following fees:

• Account setup fee
• Annual fee
• Early termination fee
• PCI compliance fee
• Payment gateway fee

Because EMV terminals in Canada are not designed to be resold or reprogrammed, Clearly offers most of its processing hardware through a terminal rental program. This is not the same thing as a credit card terminal lease, as your rental contract is month-to-month, and you can cancel at any time. At this time, it’s unclear how the company will provide equipment for US-based merchants. While Clearly offers extensive information about each of its hardware options, there are currently no pricing disclosures to buy a machine outright.

Another area in which Clearly Payments falls a little short of the “radical transparency” it advocates on its website concerns Clover subscription costs. Most Clover hardware requires a monthly subscription fee in addition to the cost of the equipment itself. This fee is charged by Clover, but Clearly could be a little more upfront about this additional expense.

Clearly Payments is not rated by the BBB, but currently has an A+ rating and zero complaints.

We couldn’t locate any specific complaints about the company on consumer protection sites, so there don’t appear to be any common issues or problems to watch out for. The company’s transparent pricing and flexible contract terms eliminate many of the problems merchants commonly have with their credit card processors.

There are just a couple of negative comments on Reddit. One Redditor complained about having to sign a contract whose terms were changed after signing and was expensive to exit. This is a little curious since Clearly only advertises month-to-month processing contracts. In any case, be sure to closely read your merchant agreement when signing a contract with Clearly (or any processor).

Another review complained about having to pay interchange fees, but a Clearly representative responded and explained that these fees are unavoidable with any processor.

Clearly Payments has five 5-star reviews on TrustPilot, and an overall score of 4.1 out of 5 stars. On Slashdot, the company has a perfect 5.0 score based on four reviews.

Almost all of Clearly’s positive reviews are detailed and explain why the merchant was impressed with the company. As you might expect, saving money on credit card processing appears to be the most commonly-praised virtue users identified. Excellent customer service is also mentioned, as is fast account setup.