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, CBD, 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 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 the Ingenico Desk 5000, Newland N910, Poynt Smart Terminal, and Clover Flex. A wireless model, the Ingenico Move 5000, is also available. These terminals all feature color touchscreens and support for magstripe, EMV, and NFC-based payment methods. The company also still offers several older models, including the Ingenico iCT220, iCT250, iWL220, and iWL250 terminals. These devices 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 Duo 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, as shown in this pricing table:

Although they’re not the lowest rates we’ve seen, these rates are very competitive compared to other providers. In fact, Clearly’s interchange-plus rates are just slightly less than those advertised by Helcim, another top Canadian merchant services provider. However, Helcim doesn’t charge a monthly fee, while Clearly does.

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. Two membership pricing options are available:

Basic Plan

• For businesses processing up to $50,000/month
• $99/month subscription fee (plus optional add-ons)
• Interchange + $0.08/transaction
• Includes free payment gateway

Pro Plan

• For businesses processing between $50,000 and $250,000/month
• $189/month subscription fee (plus optional add-ons)
• Interchange + $0.06/transaction
• Includes all features of Basic Plan, plus free mobile card reader

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.

Unlike most traditional merchant services providers, Clearly Payments offers extensive fee disclosures on its website, eliminating some of the guesswork and negotiation that you’ll have to deal with when working with a provider that uses customized quote-based pricing exclusively. Clearly’s website offers the following fee disclosures:

• No account setup fees
• No annual fees
• No early termination fees
• $21/month account fee (interchange-plus pricing option)
• $99+/month or $189+/month account fee (membership pricing option)
• No PCI compliance fees (membership pricing option)
• No payment gateway fees (membership pricing option)

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.