PayAnywhere Review

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Pros

• Free card reader (magstripe + chip card)
• Free mobile processing app
• Free virtual terminal
• Good for low-volume merchants
• 24-hour funding available

Cons

• Untransparent tiered pricing
• Numerous public complaints
• Poor customer support
• Limited pricing disclosed online
• Deceptive sales tactics

Overview

PayAnywhere is facing a tough market since mobile processing continues to be an awfully competitive segment of the credit card processing industry. If a company doesn’t offer a truly unique product or service, chances are it’s just not going to cut it. More and more, merchants are looking for integrated solutions — ones that can harness the best of all the options and provide a seamless experience. The customer service needs to be spot on too.

PayAnywhere was established in 2010 by credit card processing company North American Bancard. In the beginning, PayAnywhere just felt like a knockoff of Square but without the refined and sleek appeal. PayAnywhere has historically suffered from the same shortcomings as Square, namely lackluster customer support and poor account stability, with long-term holds happening quite often.

Back in January 2017, the company announced a “new” PayAnywhere, with a new focus on “the commerce that connects us.” It came with a brand new version of the app, new features, and a snazzy-looking new logo. It was more than just a token baby step forward, but was it enough to keep PayAnywhere competitive?

PayAnywhere is trying. We last reviewed the app shortly after the company’s announcement, so we couldn’t gather much data on whether it’s improved. Since our last review, PayAnywere has simplified its plans, and the website now has a very clean feel. But, when you dig a little deeper, its customer support and sales don’t seem to have reformed much. There are plenty of easy ways for a credit card processing company to earn a poor rating. For one, gimmicky equipment offers that include “free placement,” but there’s a monthly fee for the software needed to run the “free” equipment. For another, a complicated agreement with an unclear and completely different pricing structure that automatically kicks in once you process over a certain amount per year. And don’t forget about poor customer service. PayAnywhere continues to flirt with all of these.

PayAnywhere’s customer and tech support do not seem to have improved on their knowledge of the services and equipment, though they do seem to have improved on friendliness. Someone does answer complaints on rating websites and invites the merchants to call customer/tech support for help. But it’s also pretty clear that when people do have problems, they’re unlikely to get a resolution.

As to the contract, there’s much room for improvement just on the clarity of the language itself. Substantively, once you process over $100k on a rolling 12 months period on Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or PayPal, you are automatically switched over to a merchant account agreement. That agreement comes complete with tiered pricing, hefty early termination fees, and multiple monthly charges and penalty fees. Other than in the contract itself, none of this is disclosed on the website.

Smaller merchants who are confident that they will never process over a certain amount may find a good deal with PayAnywhere, but many others will not. Be careful and make sure that this service will work for your card processing needs, and make sure you read and understand every bit of your contract.

PayAnywhere scores a mediocre 3 out of 5 stars. The features continue to be right; there’s no question there. The Pay As You Go plan also continues to be a good plan. But we haven’t seen improvement elsewhere. The reliability of the service remains doubtful, customer support appears to be equally dubious, and if you’re interested in that “free placement” hardware that comes with the Custom plan, you can probably find a better deal elsewhere without having to pay monthly software usage fees. Plus, the lack of disclosure on the Custom plan and the lack of warning on the website about the automatic switch over to a more complicated contract is a poor sales tactic that destroys trust.

All of this is too bad. It’s pretty clear that some folks at PayAnywhere are trying hard to improve, and it does have a good product. Unfortunately, its execution hasn’t improved and in some aspects has gone backward.

Check out our full PayAnywhere review below for a complete analysis! If you are a current or former PayAnywhere customer, share your thoughts about it in the Comments section below!

Products & Services

PayAnywhere has tweaked its pricing structure since our last review. It still has two plans, but they’re not the same as the old plans. For the new plans, the key concept is whether you fall above or below processing $10k/month. If you process below $10k/month, then you can get the Pay As You Go plan. If you process above $10k/month, you can sign up for the Custom plan. According to the Support page, the $10k/month is a suggested upper/lower limit and not a hard requirement for either plan.

With either plan, you get access to the following software:

• PayAnywhere Inside: online services hub
• PayAnywhere App: mobile point of sale software
• PayAnywhere SDK: the software developer’s kit for in-app purchases

With either the Pay As You Go or Custom plan, you get the following services for free:

• Offline Transactions: If you are using the mobile processing app at a location with poor reception, you can still take the payment card information, then send the transaction to PayAnywhere when your reception has improved.
• Customers: You can get insight into your customer’s behavior by seeing their spending amount, visit frequency, and whether they’re repeat purchasers. You can ask for the customer’s feedback by printing an automatic message on their receipts.
• Reporting: You can generate many types of reports based on all the data the software tracks to see various trends, such as sales volume, payment type, customers, employees, and inventory. You can create a transaction, refunds, and deposit reports as well as export them to third-party accounting software, such as Quickbooks. You can view these reports from a computer, from a mobile device, and even from a wearable.
• Dispute Management: You can view and manage chargeback activity, upload supporting documentation, and receive notifications when action is required.
• Open Tickets & Tabs: If you operate a restaurant and wish to create open tickets for food or drink orders, you can use the Open Tickets & Tabs feature to help you add items or tips to an order.
• Employees: You can hire, schedule, and pay your staff through the PayAnywhere Inside hub. You can designate employees as administrators, managers, cashiers, or staff with customizable levels of access. Through these roles, you can control who gets access to what information (e.g., employees can view their timesheets, but only managers can view sales reports) and who can operate cash registers. You even get a free integration with the PayAnywhere Homebase, so you can schedule, track time, and process payroll for your employees.
• Inventory: With the PayAnywhere inventory tracking feature, you can store your catalog in the cloud and track product availability from any terminal or mobile device. If you currently track your inventory through some other method, you can bulk import the file into the PayAnywhere inventory tracking feature. As you make a sale, the item is automatically deducted from your inventory, so you’ll know when to restock. You can place items into different categories (e.g., luggage, jewelry, etc.), add different modifiers (e.g., large, medium, small), and set discounts. You can even use bar code scanners to scan and add items to an order. Lastly, you can generate reports to see how your merchandise is performing.
• Next-Day Funding: Like other third-party processors, PayAnywhere can provide next-day funding to its merchants. Funds processed by 10 PM Eastern Time will be funded the next business day. Funds processed after Friday 10 PM Eastern Time will be funded the following Monday. All funds will be deposited less processing fees. On various rating websites for the PayAnywhere service, we continue to see merchants report late funding, but it’s difficult to tell if the issue is with PayAnywhere, if the merchant simply processed the transaction after the daily cut off time, or if PayAnywhere was withholding funds due to chargeback concerns.

PayAnywhere App Features

The PayAnywhere app is a free download from either the App Store or Google Play. The app allows you to access all of PayAnywhere’s services, as long as you have wireless reception. We’ll go through some of the major features below, but note that the app has a “Test Drive” feature, so we encourage you to download the app to your phone or tablet and test the software out yourself.

When you open up the app, a numeric keypad ready to take a new transaction appears. On the upper right-hand side, there’s a small receipt icon. Tapping on it will print your receipt on any Bluetooth printer synced to your mobile device. Below the numeric keypad, three more icons allow you to select from either a cash payment, a credit card keyed sale, or Alipay.

On the upper left-hand side, there is a “hamburger” menu of three short vertical stripes. Tapping on it takes you to the main drop-down menu where you can select from the following items:

• Account Profile: Here, you find your account information as well as your status (e.g., owner, administrator, cashier, etc.).
• New Sale: This is the main credit card processing menu. It includes a numeric keypad where you can enter such things as card numbers or cash amounts. You can also select to pay with cash, a keyed-in credit card, or Alipay, and also to print, email, or text receipts. This menu can be displayed in Retail View or Terminal View (switchable under the Settings menu). In Terminal View, you can also pick from pre-selected “express items,” apply automatic discounts, scan items, and find an item from various categories of inventory (e.g., accessories, bags, sunglasses, etc.). And, of course, check the customer out in a shopping cart, including through a swiped/tapped/dipped payment card, keyed-in credit card, cash, or Alipay. You can split payments as well if your customer(s) wish to pay with two different methods or cards.
• New Pre-Auth: You can set up a pre-authorization from this section. A pre-authorization holds funds on a customer’s card and charges them later when the invoice is finalized. Hotels, for instance, like to use pre-authorizations to reserve a room when you book. PayAnywhere’s pre-auth lasts for 120 days. Pre-auth isn’t a common feature in mobile processing apps, and it’s interesting to see.
• Transactions: Here, you can see a list of all your transactions, including credit card sales, refunds, and cash sales. You can also access a list of pending transactions and adjust a ticket to add tips.
• Reports: You can access a whole host of sales reports from this section. The reports can be displayed as graphs or charts by amount, by item, by payment method, etc. You can filter them by date and compare the reports to each other.
• Settings: Here, you can
  • Toggle between the Retail and Terminal display themes
  • Manage how your receipt looks through various settings — e.g., include your company logo, solicit customers reviews, display various social media buttons, etc.
  • Enable the Open Tickets & Tabs feature
  • Set default sale options on the New Sale screen
  • Select to accept certain private label cards
  • Enable a cash discount feature that automatically reduces the price if the customer pays in cash
  • Select whether you require a customer signature on receipts
  • Select to display various tip amounts
  • Allow the app to access your device’s geolocation feature to detect the sales tax percentage at your location automatically
  • Manage various hardware synced to the app
• Help: Information on how to reach customer support (phone, email), FAQ, knowledgebase, and videos can be accessed here.

These features were pretty advanced for mPOS systems two years ago, and they continue to be in the upper echelons of mPOS systems today. PayAnywhere is not going to unseat Square, however, because Square rolls out new features very quickly. Nevertheless, PayAnywhere’s software and services hold their own against Square’s services.

PayAnywhere Hardware & Compatible Devices

PayAnywhere offers a variety of credit card readers, terminals, and peripherals (cash drawer and printer). There’s a way to get some of this hardware for free. For the terminals, you will have to pay a setup fee and a monthly software fee. More details below.

If you are a first time customer of PayAnywhere, you can get a basic Bluetooth 2-in-1 magstripe and EMV mobile reader for free. If you need more of these readers, you’ll have to pay about $30 each. You can also upgrade to a Bluetooth 3-in-1 magstripe, EMV, and NFC mobile reader for about $50. These readers connect via Bluetooth to your smartphone or tablet that is running the PayAnywhere App.

If you wish to have something more permanent, you can buy various POS terminals from PayAnywhere as well. The smallest of these terminals is a handheld wireless device called the Smart Terminal. It comes with an integrated magstripe, EMV, and NFC reader and has a touchscreen keypad for accepting PIN debit transactions. It even has a scanner and a receipt printer. You can buy the Smart Terminal for about $350 (price at this writing). For about $550 (at this writing), you can buy a slightly larger device called the Smart Flex. It has all the functions of the handheld Smart Terminal, except it is larger and has a customer-facing second screen. Finally, you can buy a full-fledged device that can sit on your countertop called the Point of Sale Terminal for about $950 (at this writing).

You can sort of get the POS terminals for free if you sign up for the Custom plan. PayAnywhere calls it a “free placement,” but unless PayAnywhere personnel comes to your store and physically places the terminal on your counter, it’s not a “free placement.” It’s an equipment lease for zero dollars for the term of your processing contract with PayAnywhere.

Unfortunately, even with the “free placement,” the Smart Terminal, the Smart Flex, and the Smart Point of Sale all run the software for which PayAnywhere charges a fee. The fee depends on the device, and it ranges from $10 – $30 per month. For the Smart Flex and Smart Point of Sale, you also have to pay a one-time setup fee as high as $100.

You can buy barcode scanners from Amazon, and you can rent or buy printers and cash drawers from PayAnywhere for an additional fee. We recommend you buy since renting just doesn’t make sense. For instance, PayAnywhere sells its cash drawer for $50 but rents the same drawer out for $14/month. There is no reason to rent if the rent after four months is enough to buy the equipment outright.

Fees & Rates

As already mentioned above, PayAnywhere now has only two plans:

• Pay As You Go
• Custom

With the Pay As You Go plan, you pay:

• Swiped, Dipped, or Tapped: 2.69%
• Keyed, Virtual Terminal, Invoicing, & Recurring Payments: 3.49% + $0.19

This plan is suggested to those merchants who process $10k/month or lower. PayAnyhere clearly warns merchants that they will be charged a $3.99/month inactivity fee if no payment is processed for 12 months. The charge begins on the 13th month, and it resets for another 12 months if you take a card payment.

The Pricing page discloses no other charges, not even a chargeback fee. A quick search in the Support section also did not reveal any information. Since it is difficult to believe that any card processor will waive the chargeback fee, this lack of disclosure suggests that there may be other hidden fees.

The Pay As You Go plan’s fees are competitive but not necessarily the cheapest around. For a smaller business that can benefit from the free software and services of PayAnywhere, the cost might be worth it. However, free software and services are often a part of any third-party processor’s standard offering. Be sure to check out other processors, such as Square, before you make your final decision.

The website does not display any rates for the Custom plan. Merchants are encouraged to call PayAnywhere for the Custom plan, which suggests that the processing fees are negotiable.

Note that the main Pricing webpage states that Pay As You Go is for merchants processing less than $10k/month and Custom is for merchants processing over $10k/month. That sounds pretty firm. However, if you look to the Support page, it says that the $10k/month is just a recommended range. That makes it sound like you can still use the Pay As You Go plan even if you process over $10k/month.

As already mentioned above, PayAnywhere does charge a monthly software fee for its POS terminals. The fee is clearly disclosed on the equipment page for each terminal and ranges from $10 – $30 per month.

PayAnywhere has a rather strange contract structure, and this is worrisome as far as fees and rates are concerned. (See the Sales & Advertising Transparency and the Contract Length & Cancellation sections for more.) Once you process over a certain amount, you are automatically switched over to another contract. Under this new contract, you are a merchant account holder and must use a tiered pricing scheme (which we dislike here at Merchant Maverick). The contract also discloses other possible fees such as:

• Transaction fee
• PCI DSS Non-Compliance fee
• Early Termination fee
• MyBzPerks Program fee
• Chargeback fee
• Representment fee
• Retrieval fee
• Minimum processing fee for processing below a minimum volume

Also, PayAnywhere will charge certain card industry pass-through fees listed in a complicated chart in Section 1.15 of the agreement.

One of the easiest ways to earn a low rating here at Merchant Maverick is to have an undisclosed pricing scheme with lots of hidden fees. Among the different fee structures for credit card processing, the one we favor the least is tiered pricing. Add a bunch of recurring or one-time fees, such as a PCI DSS non-compliance charge, and this pretty much guarantees a low rating.

It almost seems unfair to give PayAnywhere a low rating for this entire section. After all, it does disclose the charges for its Pay As You Go plan, the inactivity fee, and the monthly software fee. However, PayAnywhere has a structure where a merchant can be automatically switched to another contract with entirely different — and undisclosed — fees. We must take this into account with our rating in this section.

Sales & Advertising Transparency

We’ve reviewed PayAnywhere several times in the past and have always found PayAnywhere to be a little lacking in the Sales & Advertising Transparency department. It used to — and may still — use third-party sales organizations to sign up new merchants, and this practice tends to generate more complaints from merchants. As well, PayAnywhere did not disclose the full details of some offers that sounded too good to be true, and that made us wary. But that was the old PayAnywhere. Since then, it’s revamped its software and services. So while we are still cautious, we approached this review update with some optimism.

PayAnywehere did make changes that made its sales and advertising more transparent. It seems some folks at PayAnywhere are trying to make the service better. For instance, even though the company does charge an inactivity fee for accounts that have been dormant for more than 12 months, it discloses this fee in a way that’s hard to miss. Furthermore, it charges a setup fee and a monthly software fee of $10 – $30 for the POS terminals, and this fee is equally disclosed in a difficult-to-miss way.

The improvements stop there, however. The contract refers to a schedule of fees shown to the merchant upon signing up. Yet, these additional fees cannot be found anywhere on the PayAnywhere website — not on the Support page and not in the contract. There is no way for a merchant to consider and compare fees with other processors until they’re in the actual process of signing up for the service.

As to PayAnywhere’s Custom program, nothing about fees and rates are disclosed at all. You must call them to obtain this information, presumably after you give them your sales numbers. On the one hand, asking you to call signals PayAnywhere’s willingness to negotiate rates, and that’s a good thing. On the other hand, giving them your contact information probably guarantees they will hound you to sign up even after you decide against doing business with them.

PayAnywhere does have a blog, and it is relatively active. There’s an interesting mix of content, and it’s pretty decent in quality. The content isn’t focused exclusively on why you should sign up with PayAnywhere. It’s more focused on how to help your business grow in many different areas. These are all positives, and it suggests that someone at PayAnywhere seems to care about growing the company as a business.

PayAnywhere also has a Facebook page that currently has 14K followers and a Twitter account with about 1,500 followers. Neither is particularly engaging, though. Both accounts simply notify followers of new blog posts, and there are no comments from the followers.

There’s also a YouTube channel with some videos and less than 1k subscribers. About a year ago, PayAnywhere added more videos to the channel, including testimonials from small business owners and tutorials for its software. However, that effort seems to have stopped, and the channel now has very little activity.

From a sales and advertising standpoint, PayAnywhere’s blog and social media accounts seem normal and not too concerning. There’s not a lot of activity, so it’s not using these advertising venues to the fullest. However, given that it takes time to maintain these accounts and generate content, the fact that at least the blog publishes regularly is a plus.

The truly problematic issue with PayAnywhere’s sales and advertising transparency is in its contract. Other parts of the contract will be discussed in more detail in the Contract Length & Cancellation section. The portion that relates to sales and advertising transparency will be discussed here.

Other than dense legal writing, the PayAnywhere contract seems to offer a fairly typical deal for a third-party processor, except for a section called Conversion to Direct Merchant. If a merchant processes more than $100k/year in Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or PayPal charges, the contract converts them into a direct merchant, with a merchant account, and they begin processing under a radically different rates and fees structure. Given how this conversion drastically changes a merchant’s working relationship with the processor, it seems PayAnywhere should prominently warn prospective merchants of this possible change. Yet, other than the contract, this relationship change does not appear anywhere else on the website.  The merchant is merely automatically converted without notice.

This is a big problem, and it is enough to reduce PayAnywhere’s rating for this section. If you’re a small merchant who will never process $100k/year in Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or PayPal charges, then maybe you will never run into this issue. However, if you ever expect to take in more than $100k/year in Visa, Mastercard, etc. but continue to want to work with a third-party processor, you’re better off looking elsewhere. There’s no reason to sign up for one type of service only to be automatically switched to a very different service that you never signed up for.

Contract Length & Cancellation

The PayAnywhere contract is problematic. You are, in fact, signing two different contracts lumped into one, and the business deal in the second contract is not disclosed anywhere else on the website. So unless you work through the contract’s dense language, you wouldn’t know about this second contract.

When you first sign up with PayAnywhere, you sign on to its standard contract found under the Legal link in the footer of the website. It’s a contract that either party can cancel at any time without penalty. If you have the “free placement” hardware, you must return it within a certain period. Otherwise, most of the contract looks like a non-controversial standard third-party processor contract except for Section 8.

According to Section 8 of the contract (Conversion to Direct Merchant), if you process:

1. over $1 million in American Express charges on a rolling 12 months basis or $100k in three months you must enter into a direct agreement with American Express;
2. over $100k in Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or PayPal in 12 months, then you automatically become a direct merchant, and a different contract automatically becomes effective and takes over the business relationship.

This second contract is attached to the end of the third-party processing contract.

For American Express, the requirement to sign a direct contract is not controversial because it is how the Amex OptBlue program works. The Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or PayPal processing limit, however, is not standard. Here, North American Bancard is trying to move you up to its merchant account program without selling you the program first. With the merchant account, all sorts of fees come into play, and the nature of the business relationship changes completely.

The new agreement is for a three-year term. Either party can terminate the agreement. However, if the merchant terminates before the end of the three years, they’d be subject to an early termination fee of $295 or all the monthly fees in the remaining contract term, whichever is greater. North American Bancard may terminate the contract at any time, charge the merchant a $500 account closure fee, and withhold any funds in the account that is due to them. The only saving grace in this harsh term and termination procedure is that the merchant has 45 days to cancel the agreement once the merchant is switched to this agreement.

This contract structure does not seem upfront or fair. The business terms of the second contract are never disclosed anywhere else on the website, and we don’t think you should enter into a business arrangement without understanding the business terms. We recommend that you READ BOTH CONTRACTS, make a note of every fee, and ask questions if you don’t understand something. If PayAnywhere can’t explain it, then walk away. If someone promises to waive a fee, get it in writing. We have seen complaints about major billing issues and fees, and verbal agreements count for nothing in this business. It’s essential that you know what you are signing.

If you still like PayAnywhere’s software and services (and they are indeed very nice) after reading the contract and are sure that you won’t exceed the $100k per year limit in processing Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or PayPal, then sign with PayAnywhere at your own risk. Just be aware that there are other third-party processors with a more straightforward contract structure and at least as good services offered for a better price.

Customer Service & Technical Support

PayAnywhere gives a customer support number, an email address, and offers a live chat from its website. No hours are listed for the phone number or live chat functions. While this suggests that it is a 24/7 support, from our previous reviews where it reduced support hours, it may be that the support remains limited.

In addition to phone, chat, and email support, PayAnywhere also offers:

• Knowledgebase: There’s a help center on the PayAnywhere website that you can also access through the mobile app. It’s nowhere near as in-depth as the knowledgebase offered by Square and many others, but it is usable. It walks you through the basics but probably won’t provide much help if you are experiencing real technical or support issues.
• YouTube Videos: The PayAnywhere YouTube channel has a bunch of tutorials at least a year old. Given how fast software tends to update these days, these videos may or may not be out of date.

User Reviews

Negative Reviews & Complaints

PayAnywhere has a Better Business Bureau profile separate from North American Bancard, its parent company. Alarmingly, when you get to the BBB page for PayAnywhere, you see:

BBB’s information on this company is being updated, and no report is available at this time.

You can’t see reviews or complaints, though you can leave one with the BBB.

Elsewhere, the PayAnywhere app rates 3.5 out of 5 stars on the App Store with 290 reviews and 3.8 out of five stars on Google Play with 3,700 reviews. From Trustpilot, PayAnywhere rated 2.5 out of 5 stars because it uses multiple tiers of salespeople to sell its services.

All the ratings echo several themes:

• The app is too slow and quits mysteriously
• Privacy concerns from users because the Bluetooth reader seems to want unnecessary additional access to the phone
• Transactions often won’t run through
• Bad customer and tech support

Looking at our previous review for PayAnywhere, it appears that its customer service has not improved, and that’s disappointing. Someone at PayAnywhere continues to try to do better, though, and it’s very evident. A designated PayAnywhere personnel consistently invites reviewers with negative experiences to contact customer support again to resolve the issue. Even though the message is nearly always the same (i.e., same phrasing, so probably a cut-and-paste job), at least PayAnywhere is trying. As stated above, it seems some folks want to make PayAnywhere a great service, but other forces are at play, so it ends up in the same place.

Certain types of complaints seem to have quieted down since our last review of PayAnywhere. Mentions of withheld funds, freezing of accounts, sudden terminations, and delayed fund transfers have become fewer. Similarly, so have complaints on hidden fees, unclear and subjective limits to processing, and owed fees after closing an account. Fewer complaints do not mean that these issues aren’t still there. It just means that we haven’t seen a jump in these types of complaints since our last review.

Positive Reviews & Testimonials

Despite the above section on negative reviews, positive reviews for PayAnywhere do exist. Some merchants have never experienced any of the problems described in the negative reviews. They like the software and services very much. They found customer service to be helpful and able to resolve their issues quickly.

It seems with PayAnywhere that you’re either very happy with them or very angry with them. Not much exists in the middle.

Final Verdict

In our last review of PayAnywhere, we thought PayAnywhere’s new app and the suite of services showed a lot of promise. We thought the hardware and customer service could both improve. We didn’t like the pricing scheme, but we were hopeful that things would change.

PayAnywhere did make changes, and in many areas, it did improve. While it is worrisome that BBB has suspended its rating page, customer service seems to be trying harder to please those who complained. They redesigned the mPOS hardware so that the card readers connect through Bluetooth. The mPOS app, however, seems to be slow and glitchy. Sometimes, transactions won’t go through.

In our last review, we didn’t like the pricing scheme offered, and PayAnywhere changed that. We wish we could say that it was for the better, but it’s not. PayAnywhere tried hard to be transparent in its Pay As You Go plan, and to a large extent, it succeeded. However, now there’s no more information on the Custom plan at all. Worst of all, the contract that governs the relationship with the merchants could switch automatically to another plan, a plan that can have an unfavorable pricing structure and complicated fees.

Admittedly, if you’re a small business, you might never have to deal with this higher volume plan that automatically kicks in. In that case, you would probably enjoy the various free PayAnywhere services. However, if you ever plan to grow, then we recommend that you look elsewhere. You’d be able to get similar services for a comparable price, and you won’t have to deal with surprising changes to the contract. An automatic switch from a third-party processor relationship to a direct merchant relationship is not a small switch.

Because no information or warning about this switch is disclosed on the PayAnwhere website except in the contract, and because of the other customer service issues, PayAnywhere scores just 3 out of 5 stars.

We think you can find better options for mobile processing. If you think there’s ever a possibility that your business will grow, don’t succumb to the lure of free software for your business’s sales, employment, and other functions. This way, in the future you won’t have to suffer the headaches of porting the data out and switching software systems. Just start somewhere else, so you don’t get trapped.

Good or bad, if you have experience with PayAnywhere, please leave us a comment with your thoughts.

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