Easy Pay Direct Review

Pros

• Good for high-risk industries
• Free gateway
• Free virtual terminal
• Trusted by consumers
• Inexpensive hardware

Cons

• Untransparent tiered pricing
• Little pricing disclosed online
• $99 account setup fee
• A three-year contract with an automatic renewal clause

Easy Pay Direct Overview

Easy Pay Direct is a payment gateway and merchant account provider headquartered in Austin, Texas. Founded in 2000, Easy Pay Direct currently serves over 60,000 clients. The company’s EPD Gateway is its primary product, with merchant accounts provided through partnerships with numerous major US and international processors and banks. However, you can also use the EPD Gateway with your existing merchant account if you already have one.

As all Easy Pay Direct reviews note, the company mainly markets itself to high-risk merchants, so if you’re a gun merchant, CBD seller, nutraceuticals vendor, or “adult” product business, rejoice! Lower-risk businesses can probably find a better deal elsewhere, but Easy Pay Direct offers features that appeal to lower-risk businesses as well. The company also works with many different back-end processors, hugely increasing your chances of getting approved for a merchant account.

There’s much to like about Easy Pay Direct. Its EPD Gateway is a solid, feature-packed product that’s compatible with most online shopping carts and provides top-notch Level I PCI-compliant security. The company offers a broad selection of both wired and wireless terminals, POS systems, and mobile payment systems and sells them to you at wholesale prices rather than sticking you with an expensive lease. The company’s perfect BBB record is another promising indicator.

Easy Pay Direct has its minor shortcomings, though. The company primarily charges processing rates under a tiered pricing plan, and you’ll likely have to sign a three-year contract. The lack of an early termination fee (in most cases) takes a lot of the sting out of the long-term contract, but you may still have trouble trying to close your account early. There’s also a $99 account setup fee.

These are all common issues among high-risk providers. In fact, Easy Pay Direct is probably less expensive overall than most other high-risk merchant services providers. We’re giving the company a score of 4.5 out of 5 stars. It’s not perfect, but it compares very favorably with other high-risk specialists in the industry.

Supported Countries

Though Easy Pay Direct doesn’t specifically list each supported country, the company states the following on its website:

Easy Pay Direct is connected with 38 offshore banks in a variety of jurisdictions. We have relationship [sp] throughout the Caribbean, Canada and the European Union.

Easy Pay Direct offers US-based accounts as well.

Easy Pay Direct Products & Services

Whether your business is strictly retail, eCommerce, or a hybrid of the two, Easy Pay Direct has a full line of services to fill your needs. Offerings include the following:

• Merchant Accounts: Easy Pay Direct is not a direct processor. As with other high-risk specialists like PaymentCloud, Easy Pay Direct offers merchant accounts through numerous partnerships with both domestic and international processors and acquiring banks. The company also partners with several offshore banks to provide accounts to merchants located overseas that do business primarily in the US.
• High-Risk Specialization: Easy Pay Direct specializes in providing accounts to high-risk merchants, including information products, firearms, nutraceuticals, and CBD merchants. One unique feature it offers is load balancing, where a single merchant is provided with multiple merchant accounts. You can specify what percentage of your sales will go to each account. This redundancy means that payments can be automatically redirected to a different account if one of your merchant accounts has a hold placed on it.
• Payment Gateway: The Easy Pay Direct Gateway allows you to accept credit and debit cards, eCheck (ACH) payments, and online payments. Among its many features is a Customer Vault that securely stores your customers’ sensitive payment data. The gateway meets Level I security standards for PCI compliance, and a free virtual terminal is available for mail order and telephone order merchants.
• Credit Card Terminals: Easy Pay Direct doesn’t provide much specific information about the credit card terminals it offers, but the company includes EMV-compliant models. Some terminals support Apple Pay and Android Pay. The company will also sell you its terminals at wholesale prices, rather than trap you in an expensive, long-term lease. This is likely to be cheaper than buying a terminal on your own and paying a reprogramming fee to make it compatible with the company’s system.
• Point Of Sale (POS) Systems: Easy Pay Direct also offers the Clover Mini (see our review) and Clover Station (see our review) POS systems through a partnership with Fiserv. These systems feature built-in EMV and NFC capability, plus access to the Clover App Market, which allows you to add apps, such as analytics, gift cards, and loyalty programs, and integration with third-party accounting systems, such as QuickBooks, to your Clover system.
• Mobile Payments: Easy Pay Direct’s website shows its gateway running on smartphones and tablets, but it doesn’t currently offer a dedicated mobile payments app. Instead, you’ll probably have to run the EPD Gateway through the browser on your mobile device. You’ll also need a compatible mobile card reader to swipe your customers’ cards. The company doesn’t disclose much information about this feature; discuss it with the sales team before signing up if you need this capability.
• Shopping Cart Integration: Easy Pay Direct offers its proprietary Quick-Click shopping cart, which is built directly into its EPD Gateway. It’s very basic and requires technical proficiency to set up. Fortunately, the gateway is compatible with 134 shopping carts (including Shopify). The gateway also includes an emulator mode for Authorize.Net (see our review) in case you want to use it with a shopping cart that isn’t certified as being compatible.
• Developer Resources: If you need to customize the interface between your website and the EPD gateway, Easy Pay Direct offers some APIs and SDKs to help you do this. Documentation is available directly from the website.
• Business Loans & Merchant Cash Advances: Easy Pay Direct works with a network of 20 third-party lenders to offer both merchant cash advances and traditional business loans. You can borrow a maximum of $500,000. Repayment terms range from 6-18 months for MCAs and 6-36 months for traditional business loans. Before applying for an MCA, check out our post, How To Get A Good Deal On A Cash Advance Loan, to learn how to avoid getting ripped off.

Fees & Rates

We value transparency from merchant services providers when it comes to pricing. However, as Easy Pay Direct uses so many different back-end processors, it’s just not practical to list every possible rate and fee the way a processor like Stripe can. The company does post some rate information (listed below), but it’s only the lowest available rate and doesn’t reflect what most merchants actually pay for most of their transactions. This is a typical drawback of the tiered pricing system.

• Swiped Card Rate: 1.59% + $0.17
• Online Card Rate: 2.39% + $0.29
• ACH/eCheck Rate: 1.6% + $0.29

The company currently advertises that interchange-plus pricing is available to all businesses, but we’re not sure if that includes high-risk companies or not. Most high-risk providers only offer a more expensive tiered pricing plan to high-risk businesses, so don’t be surprised if that’s what you have to settle for.

Easy Pay Direct doesn’t disclose most of its account fees, so expect quite a bit of variability there, too. One fee that apparently applies to all merchants is a $99 account setup fee. You’ll also usually pay $24.95 per month to maintain your account. The amount of this fee might differ depending on which back-end processor is servicing your account. It’s not clear whether this fee includes PCI compliance or if it’s billed separately.

One final recommendation: Review your contract very thoroughly to see what other fees you’ll be paying before you sign up. We receive frequent complaints from merchants about providers charging “hidden” fees, but the truth is that most (if not all) of them are disclosed in your contract documents. Poring through pages and pages of fine print is never fun, but it can save you from expensive surprises later.

Fortunately, Easy Pay Direct’s fees and rates appear to be in line with industry averages for high-risk merchant account providers. The fact that none of the company’s 60,000+ customers has complained about them is a good indication that the prices are reasonable.

Contract Length & Early Termination Fee

Like most providers, Easy Pay Direct doesn’t disclose its contract terms on its website. Most contracts appear to be for three years, which is the industry standard. Depending on which back-end processor you’re set up with, your contract term might be shorter or longer. Also, your contract will likely include an automatic renewal clause, usually for successive one-year periods.

The good news is that the company does not charge an early termination fee (ETF) for most merchants — you won’t be penalized for closing your account before the contract term expires (though the company’s offshore accounts often include ETFs). Closing your account without being penalized can still be challenging, so follow the instructions for closing your account to the letter before doing this.

Sales & Advertising Transparency

Easy Pay Direct’s website contains some good information, but it’s laid out in a non-intuitive way, so expect to spend a little time hunting to find what you’re looking for. The company’s blog is worth keeping an eye on, though. Easy Pay Direct also offers a free report entitled 4 Easy Steps to Avoid Merchant Account Collapse in exchange for your email address. While this is a useful resource, expect a follow-up contact from the company’s sales team if you download it. The company also has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

The website includes numerous ways to communicate with the company’s sales representatives, who are all in-house employees. We appreciate that Easy Pay Direct doesn’t use independent agents to market accounts — this practice can lead to unethical sales practices.

Customer Service & Technical Support

• Phone: Phone support is available from 8 AM to 5 PM (CDT), Monday to Friday. Outside of those hours, you can still access support for merchant account-related issues through your back-end processor.
• Email: Email support is also available.
• Text: You can text EPD for support during business hours.
• Live Chat: EPD provides live chat support during business hours.
• Training: The company will provide training for new customers who sign up for one of its accounts.
• FAQ: EPD provides an FAQ, but it’s not nearly as in-depth as a full knowledgebase.

Poor customer support is a common problem in the processing industry, so it’s good to see that Easy Pay Direct has very few complaints about this issue. Given the size of the company and the number of merchants using its services, this is a good indication that it provides high-quality customer support.

Easy Pay Direct Reviews, Complaints & Testimonials

Negative Easy Pay Direct Reviews & Complaints

Easy Pay Direct received BBB accreditation in 2015, but it appears to have recently dropped it. Although no longer accredited, the company still has an A+ rating. Even more impressive is the fact that the company has zero complaints, despite being in business for over eighteen years and serving over 60,000 merchants. There are also no complaints against it on Ripoff Report.

This, of course, is very commendable and a strong indication that you will receive outstanding service from Easy Pay Direct. Just know that while payment gateway providers rarely receive very many complaints, merchant account providers are often the target of a high number of them. Although merchants seem genuinely happy with Easy Pay Direct and its payment gateway, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re satisfied with the back-end processor. Before signing up with the company, research your back-end processor as well before opening an account.

Complaints include:

• Customer Communication: A complainant claimed to have issues getting passed around to multiple parties before getting a satisfactory answer.
• Hard To Cancel: While there isn’t a cancellation fee, customers have reported having difficulty getting out of their contract.
• Opaque Rates: Tiered pricing can be tough to understand for some customers.

Positive Easy Pay Direct Reviews & Testimonials

Easy Pay Direct now has a full Testimonials page on its website, featuring testimonials from actual clients. Most of these are brief (usually just a paragraph or two), but they highlight several of the company’s features that customers find most useful. There are also a few more in-depth interviews with customers on the company’s YouTube channel.

All in all, customers seem to be quite happy with the service they’ve received from the company. Praise includes:

• Excellent Customer Service: While complaints do exist, many customers seem pleased with the customer care they received.
• Easy Application Process: Merchant accounts applications can sometimes be arduous, but Easy Pay Direct seems to do a lot to make them easier.
• Load Balancing: Overall, load balancing seems to be a big hit with Easy Pay Direct’s customers.

Final Verdict

If you’re a high-risk merchant, finding a merchant account can really put you through the wringer. We’re always pleasantly surprised when we find a high-risk provider that offers a fair deal at a reasonable price, which is why we’re happy to recommend Easy Pay Direct.

The company’s partnership with so many different processors means that you have a better-than-average chance of getting approved for an account. The lack of an ETF (in most cases) is also welcome. Interchange-plus pricing, while not available for all clients, is rare in the high-risk sector. We’re also impressed by the EPD Gateway’s features as well as the remarkably clean online reputation the company has maintained despite its size.

Of course, things aren’t perfect. We wish the company offered more information about the credit card terminals it provides — including prices. We’d also like to see a more robust knowledgebase so merchants could solve the more basic issues without contacting customer support. Lastly, we wish Easy Pay Direct offered a full-fledged mobile processing app.

We’re giving Easy Pay Direct a score of 4.5 out of 5 stars and our official recommendation. We find the company to be one of the best high-risk merchant account providers (and one of the best CBD oil providers) in the industry.

Nevertheless, we encourage you to obtain quotes from several providers (perhaps from this list of our favorite international processing options) and compare their overall costs against how well their features match up with your specific business needs. Lastly, if you’ve had any experience with Easy Pay Direct, please leave us a comment and tell us about it!

The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

Easy Pay Direct	Visit Site

After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Easy Pay Direct for yourself.

The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

Easy Pay Direct	Visit Site

After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Easy Pay Direct for yourself.

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