Leaders Merchant Services offers a variety of other tools for merchants but leaves a lot to be desired in transparency, pricing, and overall ethical practices.
WRITTEN & RESEARCHED BY
Lead Staff Writer
Last updated onUpdated
REVIEWED BY
Expert Contributor
| Total Rating | 1.2 |
|---|---|
| Fees & Rates1.3 | |
| Products & Services2.3 | |
| Contract0.8 | |
| Sales & Advertising Transparency0.6 | |
| Customer Service1.3 | |
| User Reviews1.0 | |
Table of Contents
Leaders Merchant Services is a merchant services provider and an ISO of Fiserv (formerly First Data) — one of the dozens of companies that resell Fiserv’s credit card processing services and the very popular line of Clover terminals and point of sale (POS) systems. The company was acquired by iPayment in 2017 but continues to operate under its original name.
Unfortunately, Leaders Merchant Services stands out as one of the worst Fiserv resellers we’ve ever reviewed. If you’re a small business owner looking for a reputable credit card processor, Leaders is one of the worst choices you could make.
| Products & Services2.3 |
|---|
| Software & Services 3.0 |
| Hardware & Equipment 1.6 |
Since we don’t recommend that you sign up with Leaders Merchant Services under any circumstances, we’re going to keep this brief. Leaders earned an OK score for software specifically because the products and services are fine (but nothing special, and the company doesn’t offer any proprietary products or services of its own); however, the processor lost a lot of points for its limited hardware offerings and long-term terminal leases.
Here’s an overview of what’s available with Leaders’ credit card processing services:
| Fees & Rates1.3 |
|---|
| Pricing 1.6 |
| Affordability 1.0 |
Leaders earns a poor score in this category due to its untransparent pricing, tiered plan structure, and various junk fees.
Like most traditional merchant account providers, Leaders Merchant Services doesn’t disclose any pricing information on its website. Instead, it prefers to use a quote-based system that’s supposedly tailored to your particular business. Unfortunately, it’s an axiom in the processing industry that any company that promises you the lowest rates — without telling you what they will be — is going to end up being much more expensive than its competitors.
From what we’ve seen, Leaders mainly uses the overpriced tiered pricing method for setting rates. This method offers a low-priced qualified rate but also includes mid-qualified and unqualified rates that are much higher. Sales agents almost never mention this, but the majority of your transactions will fall under the mid-qualified or unqualified rates, resulting in much higher monthly processing costs than you were expecting. Surprise!
Like most other traditional providers, Leaders can also offer you a much more transparent — and affordable — interchange-plus pricing plan. However, you’ll have to ask for it, and most merchants don’t know enough about pricing plans to request a better option.
In addition to processing charges, you’ll encounter a host of merchant account fees with Leaders Merchant Services. While none of these are advertised on its website, they should be spelled out in your merchant services agreement. Here’s an overview of what you can expect with Leaders Merchant Services fees:
Note that merchants have reported many other fees with Leaders. While some are industry-standard fees, the company clearly appears to charge as many fees as possible to make up for the small amount of money it earns from processing transactions for low-volume businesses.
| Sales & Advertising Transparency0.6 |
|---|
| Sales Practices 0.8 |
| Web Presence 0.2 |
Leaders also garnered a poor score here due to their general lack of transparency regarding pricing and contracts, use of independent sales agents, and deceptive sales tactics.
With Leaders currently operating under a permanent injunction due primarily to its long history of deceptive and downright fraudulent sales practices, there’s not much more for us to say here. The company continues to use a combination of in-house sales staff and a network of independent sales agents, but both of these groups have an equally poor reputation.
Since our last review update, the company has dropped its misleading “guaranteed savings” gimmick that promised to reward you with a $200 gift card if Leaders couldn’t save you money compared to your current processor. These kinds of gimmicks are always rigged in the provider’s favor, virtually assuring that it will never have to pay the guarantee. This particular gimmick was worded so that Leaders only had to project that it would save you money, not actually do it. We’re glad that this offer has been dropped.
In previous review updates, we’ve found compelling evidence of Leaders soliciting false testimonials and partnering with shady review websites to bolster the company’s shaky public reputation. This activity appears to have stopped since Leaders accepted a permanent injunction to avoid further liability. However, many fake reviews and questionable rankings are still floating around on the internet, including a few that can be found in our Comments section below.
| Contract0.8 |
|---|
| Commitment 0.3 |
| ETF & Other Fees 1.2 |
We rated Leaders especially poorly in this category due to the company’s long-term contracts and undisclosed early termination fee.
The default contract length with Leaders Merchant Services is three years. Leaders no longer publishes its ETF amount on its website, but as far as we know, the standard ETF is still $350 if you cancel before the first year is up and $250 if you cancel within the second or third year. By removing the dollar amounts from their website, however, it’s only opened it up for independent sales agents to tack on more.
While you might be able to negotiate a lower early termination fee or even eliminate it altogether, there’s no reason to accept this. The trend in recent years within the processing industry has been to stop using long-term contracts. Almost all reputable providers today will offer you true month-to-month billing without you having to ask for it. We’ve also seen many complaints from merchants where Leaders refused to waive the ETF even when there was a credible allegation that the sales agent who set up the account either failed to mention it or outright lied about it being part of the contract.
| Customer Service1.3 |
|---|
| Personal Support 1.9 |
| Self-Service 0.6 |
While Leaders Merchant Services advertises 24/7/365 phone-based support, many customer complaints have cited very poor quality in this area. Also, be advised that the in-house support team is probably not available around the clock (I’ve seen 6:30 AM-6:00 PM PT Monday-Saturday referenced elsewhere for that). You’ll likely get passed along to third-party support after hours. If you’re using the Clover suite, expect to be directed to Clover for any technical support.
| Leaders Merchant Services Support | Availability |
|---|---|
| Phone Support | |
| Email Support | |
| Support Tickets | |
| Live Chat | |
| Dedicated Support Representative | |
| Knowledge Base or Help Center | |
| Videos & Tutorials | |
| Company Blog | |
| Social Media |
Aside from a handful of Resource PDFs and a limited FAQ, Leaders Merchant Services’ web-based self-service support tools are virtually non-existent. Some additional resources may be offered through the iAccess merchant portal, the iPayment system used by many of its subsidiaries.
Leaders earned a couple points from us for Customer Service & Technical Support by offering 24/7 support, but those points were quickly subtracted in light of the poor quality of said support.
| User Reviews1.0 |
|---|
| Customer Feedback 0.0 |
| Review Site Aggregate 1.4 |
User reviews of Leaders are quite bad, and so is our User Reviews score for this company.
Despite being in business for over 20 years, Leaders Merchant Services has only been accredited by the BBB since September 2021 (two months after the settlement of the legal action against it). The company currently has an A- rating. As of this writing, 194 complaints have been filed against Leaders in the past three years, with 22 of those complaints coming in within the past twelve months. While this actually represents a modest decrease in complaint volume since our last review update in December of 2019, it’s still an awfully high total for a company of this size. The BBB profile also includes 41 customer reviews, with an average score of just 1.29 out of 5 stars.
Information about the recent legal action against Leaders is prominently displayed at the top of the company’s BBB profile, giving consumers a clear warning that the company has a very troubled past. In fact, the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office cited the BBB complaints against Leaders in its action against the company and apparently intended to use them as evidence against Leaders if the case had gone to trial.
Here are some common complaints found in Leaders Merchant Services reviews:
Leaders features seven customer testimonials on its website, although only three of them identify the business providing the testimonial. Company-provided testimonials are always a little suspicious, but those published here don’t have any of the usual hallmarks of a false review.
The same cannot be said about Leaders’ marketing efforts throughout the rest of the internet. We’ve received several fraudulent positive Leaders credit card processing reviews on our site, all from a single IP address in India. While it’s common for companies to hire outside firms to do “reputation management,” it’s also clearly unethical when positive feedback is false. We’ve also found several instances of Leaders directly partnering with so-called “review” sites that clearly appear to be paid advertising thinly disguised as independent reviews.
While the company appears to have ceased these efforts to comply with the terms of the injunction, much of this misleading content is still on the internet. In doing your own independent research on the company, be particularly suspicious of reviews published between 2017 (when iPayment acquired Leaders) and 2020.
There are plenty of merchant services providers in the industry that engage in the kind of deceptive sales practices that got Leaders Merchant Services into legal trouble. However, we’ve yet to see one that was so egregious in its efforts to increase its profits at the expense of its customers. Between the expensive tiered pricing plans, the overpriced equipment leases, the draconian long-term contracts, the unethical (and illegal) marketing efforts, the lack of proper customer support, and the concerted efforts to disguise the company’s flaws by flooding the internet with fake reviews, Leaders has engaged in every dishonest practice that the credit card processing industry is notorious for. The company lacks any redeeming features and scores a very disappointing 1 out of 5 stars overall.
While we obviously cannot recommend that you do business with any company that’s operating under a permanent injunction, there is still the possibility that Leaders will be able to improve the quality of its services in the future. Unfortunately, the only evidence we found that Leaders is trying to turn things around is that it has ceased to publish any new false positive reviews since the injunction took effect.
If you’re a current or former client of Leaders Merchant Services, we strongly encourage you to contact the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office, as you may be entitled to restitution even if you weren’t part of the original legal action. If you’re a new business looking to establish a merchant account, or if you’re just looking for a better alternative to your current processor, check out the best credit card processing companies for small business for a choice of companies that will treat you well and offer you a fair deal on payment processing. Good luck!
We evaluate and test each payment processor that we review at Merchant Maverick, placing special emphasis on certain key characteristics in order to generate our granular ratings for merchant accounts and credit card processors.
For payment processing reviews, we use a 24-point rubric to evaluate the provider. First, we look at pricing structure – interchange plus, subscription-based, tiered, or hybrid – giving the most points to providers that provide fair, transparent pricing and docking those that rely on tiered models. Then we examine rates, the presence and transparency of early termination fees, and any additional fees.
We also look at contract length and fairness and test out sales staff and customer service channels ourselves to ensure that the company uses reputable, above-the-board sales techniques. Finally, we take the company’s online reputation into account, reading customer reviews and comments.
Read more about how we rate payment processors.
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Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews. Each staff reviewer at Merchant Maverick is a subject matter expert with experience researching, testing, and evaluating small business software and services. The rating of this company or service is based on the author’s expert opinion and analysis of the product, and assessed and seconded by another subject matter expert on staff before publication. Merchant Maverick’s ratings are not influenced by affiliate partnerships.
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