Seamless Chex Review

Paynote is a “lite” version of the company’s main Seamless Chex service and works best for freelancers, independent contractors, and other self-employed workers who need to send invoices to their clients and receive payment quickly and efficiently. Paynote also allows you to send payments and receive them, making it a convenient way to send money, pay vendors, or issue refunds to your clients. The service is also very convenient for people you’re either sending money to or requesting it from, as they won’t need to pay a fee or set up an account to complete a transaction.

Here’s a quick overview of Paynote’s primary features:

• Online account set up with no credit check
• Create & send one-time or recurring electronic invoices
• No charge to recipient
• Recipient does not need a Paynote account
• Provides real-time bank balance verification of payor’s account
• Provides real-time check tracking (all pricing plans)
• Next-day transfers available (some pricing plans)
• Flat-rate processing fees (1-2%, depending on pricing plan)

As you might expect, Seamless Chex is the company’s primary product. It’s a full-service platform for ACH and eCheck processing that can verify your customer’s bank account information, authorize the transaction, and deposit funds into your account by the next business day.

Seamless Chex can accept any legally operating business in the US, including particularly high-risk merchants who otherwise cannot get approved for a merchant account. If you already have a merchant account with a different provider, you can use the Seamless Chex service as an alternative to traditional ACH processing.

Here’s a rundown of the primary features you’ll get with Seamless Chex:

• Online Sign-Up: You can sign up for Seamless Chex right from the company’s website. We’re often suspicious of online signup offers, as they make it all too easy to find yourself locked into a long-term contract without being given a chance to even read it. However, Seamless Chex provides a link to the company’s Terms of Service on its website, so you can (and definitely should) read the fine print before signing up.
• Secure Hosted Payment Page: The Seamless Chex service allows you access to a hosted payment page, which means you don’t have to store your customer’s bank account information on your own website. (Learn more about hosted payment pages for more information on this feature.)
• Virtual Terminal: The Seamless Chex API includes a virtual terminal feature that allows you to enter payment information and send a transaction off for processing from your smartphone, tablet, laptop, or any other device with a web browser and an internet connection.
• Next-Day Funding: Traditional ACH payments can take up to 3-5 business days to complete, which can negatively affect your cash flow if you accept a lot of them. With Seamless Chex, funds are deposited into your bank account within just one business day.
• Verification Services: Verifying your customer’s payment information is just as important for eChecks as it is for credit or debit card transactions. Seamless Chex offers three levels of verification to authenticate your customers’ payment information:
  • Basic Verification: Included for free with all accounts.
  • Great Verification: Adds a funds confirmation service; $90/month for up to 25 fund verifications.
  • Best Verification: Uses Plaid to authenticate all transactions; $100/month for up to 25 Plaid verifications.
• Online Account Access: All Seamless Chex accounts – including free trial accounts – allow you to log in to an online account dashboard from any device with a web browser. Here, you can check the status of any checks you’ve sent or received, send payment request links to customers, manage batches of checks, set up recurring check payments, and more. Here’s what it looks like:

The company’s most fully-featured service is Seamless Merchant, which adds credit and debit card processing, plus a number of features you’d normally find with a more traditional merchant services provider. In addition to the company’s digital check processing service, Seamless Merchant includes the following extra features:

• Credit & Debit Card Processing: Like most merchant services providers, Seamless Chex is not a direct processor. Instead, it partners with over 25 different banks to get you approved for an account.
• High-Risk Merchant Accounts: The Seamless Merchant service is available to both low and high-risk businesses alike. High-risk industries served include travel agencies, CBD merchants, nutraceuticals, debt consolidation, telemedicine, and many others.
• Shopping Cart Integration: Seamless Merchant integrates with numerous third-party online shopping carts. Unfortunately, the company’s website does not currently provide a full compatibility list. Merchants who are already using a shopping cart should consult with the company’s sales team to confirm compatibility before signing up for an account.
• Mobile Payments: Seamless Chex offers a “free” mobile card reader with each account for mobile payment processing. However, details regarding hardware or software compatibility are currently unavailable. Note that the “free” card reader is not yours to keep – you’ll have to return it promptly if you close your account.
• Next-Day Funding: This feature is available if you’d like to receive funds from your credit card transactions just as quickly as you do from your digital check payments. It’s not clear whether this is a standard feature or an optional add-on.
• ACH Processing: Seamless Merchant also offers traditional ACH processing as either an alternative or additional service to its proprietary digital check acceptance service.
• Online Portal: Merchants using Seamless Merchant have access to the same browser-based portal used by Seamless Chex customers. However, the portal also includes additional reporting and financial management features related to credit card processing.
• Zero-Cost Processing: Seamless Merchant also offers an optional credit card surcharging program for merchants who would like to pass at least some of the cost of processing credit cards onto their customers. Legal requirements for credit card surcharging are complex, so be sure to consult our guide to credit card surcharging before pursuing this option.

Paynote users have a choice between three standardized plans (Startup, Pro, and Premium). We highly recommend that you carefully evaluate the needs of your business and the cost of each plan before making a final selection. Here are the basic costs and features of each plan:

Startup Plan

• Send up to 10 checks per month
• Electronic invoicing
• Real-time check tracking
• 2% processing fee to receive digital checks
• Standard funding (i.e., 3-5 business days)
• $14.99 per month

Pro Plan

• Send up to 25 checks per month
• Electronic invoicing
• Real-time check tracking
• 1.5% processing fee to receive digital checks
• Next-day funding available
• $49.99 per month

Premium Plan

• Send up to 75 checks per month
• Electronic invoicing
• Real-time check tracking
• 1.0% processing fee to receive digital checks
• Next-day funding available
• $99.99 per month

While these plans vary mainly by the number of checks you can send every month and the amount of the monthly fee, it’s important to note that the next-day funding feature is not available under the least-expensive Startup plan. If you only process a few checks each month, it’s unlikely you need this feature anyway.

While Paynote is a useful service for businesses that only occasionally process payments by check, the more robust Seamless Chex service includes several additional features that turn it into a fully-featured check-processing platform for businesses that depend heavily on checks for payment. Four tiers of service are available, which include the following features:

Startup Plan (for freelancers)

• 10 checks per month
• Basic verification
• Enter A Check page
• $24.99 per month

Pro Plan (for small businesses)

• 25 checks per month
• Basic verification
• Enter A Check page
• Request A Check page
• $49.99 per month

Premium Plan (for large businesses)

• 75 checks per month
• Basic verification
• Enter A Check page
• Request A Check page
• Recurring billing
• API access
• $99.99 per month

Enterprise Plan (for high volume needs)

• Over 75 checks per month
• Basic verification
• Enter A Check page
• Request A Check page
• Recurring billing
• API access
• Bank balance confirmation
• Contact Sales for pricing

Note that no per-check processing charge is listed for these plans. Presumably, the cost of processing each check is included as part of your monthly account fee.

The Seamless Merchant service includes credit/debit card and ACH/eCheck processing, giving you something more akin to a traditional merchant account. Pricing plans are limited to two options: a Clean Start Plan for new businesses that use flat-rate pricing, and a quote-based pricing plan for existing businesses that already have an established processing history. Pricing disclosures for the Clean Start plan include the following:

• 2.75% + $0.15 per transaction for all credit and debit card transactions
• 1.0% per transaction for all ACH payments
• $25.00/month account fee

These are really good rates, although we’d caution you that there may be additional fees that aren’t disclosed on the website. For one thing, there may be an additional surcharge on card-not-present transactions. As always, we strongly recommend that you read your entire contract/merchant agreement before signing up for an account to prevent unpleasant surprises later on.

The company doesn’t disclose any further information on pricing for existing businesses, so you’ll have to obtain a quote and see how it compares to what other providers can offer you. Be aware that any quote you obtain (from Seamless Chex or any other provider) is subject to negotiation, and you can usually get a better deal by not blindly accepting the company’s first offer.

We’d also caution you that the low, flat-rate prices available under the Clean Start plan are most likely only going to be available to low-risk businesses. Credit card processing rates for high-risk businesses are almost always significantly higher.

Seamless Chex currently has an A+ rating. The company has received seven complaints within the last three years, and two complaints within the last twelve months. One complaint involved fraud on the part of a third party using Seamless Chex, an issue for which the company was not responsible. In most other complaints, the company was blamed for issues (held funds, account closures, etc.) that were under the control of the merchant’s bank, not Seamless Chex.

We weren’t able to locate any further negative feedback on the company, which is a very impressive achievement in the payment processing industry. Merchants are quick to complain when things go wrong, and they frequently have legitimate reasons for being unhappy. Although Seamless Chex is a relatively small company and we would only expect to see a few complaints, the lack of any recurring problems or pattern of complaints from merchants is an impressive achievement.

There are currently a handful of testimonials from merchants on the Seamless Chex website. Although they’re brief (usually only a single sentence), the merchant and their business are clearly identified. We’d like to see this aspect of the company’s marketing developed further in the future, particularly given that it offers a unique service that’s different from what merchants have come to expect from payment providers in general.

Positive reviews can also be found on the company’s BBB and TrustPilot profiles. On the BBB site, Seamless Chex has two five-star ratings from reviewers. The TrustPilot profile currently includes 75 reviews, for an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars. Positive features that were cited include fair pricing and a transparent sales process.