WePay Review
- Date Established
- 2008
- Location
- Palo Alto, CA
Pros
- Good developer tools
- Good marketplace tools
- Chip card hardware
- No setup or application fees
Cons
- No pricing disclosed online
- Account stability issues
Overview
Who remembers the Occupy Wall Street protests from the autumn of 2011? Although I certainly do, I was unaware of the massive crowdfunding operation behind this movement. That is until I came across its chosen payment processor: WePay.
WePay has exuded a plucky, anti-establishment vibe since its early days. The payment facilitator was founded in 2008 by Rich Aberman and Bill Clerico as an alternative to PayPal for peer-to-peer payments, dues collection, and fundraising. WePay has shifted to a more behind-the-scenes role now, as you’ll see. Throughout its evolution, WePay also underwent multiple rounds of fundraising on its behalf, amassing over $75 million in venture capital.
WePay is a third-party payment facilitator (rather than a direct merchant account provider), placing it in the same category as Stripe, PayPal, and Square. As you’d imagine, this is an extremely competitive space. Currently, WePay differentiates itself by serving both as a payments processing website and a platform partner.
Let’s take a moment to define that term — platform partner. First of all, we’re talking about software platforms, not the physical kind made of wood or metal. We’re referring to any online space where lots of business owners, sellers, or fundraisers go to conduct some aspect of their business. Here are some of the types of platforms WePay partners with, along with an example of each:
- Event Management (ConstantContact)
- Accounting/Invoicing (FreshBooks)
- eCommerce/Shopping Carts (Ecwid)
- Fundraising (GoFundMe)
So, say you are a merchant who uses the FreshBooks software platform for your accounting and invoicing needs, but you also need a way to accept credit cards for your invoices. Or, what if you are managing a list of attendees for a conference in ConstantContact but need a way to collect payment from those attendees? Or, maybe you’ve got an online shop all set up via Ecwid, but you still need to decide how you’re going to accept payments from your customers.
This is where WePay comes in. WePay’s goal is to have its payment facilitating capability already embedded inside the platforms that merchants use every day. Merchants can then quickly and easily start accepting payments without ever leaving the software platform they were already using. As a small business owner, you can’t sign up for WePay in isolation, as you might with PayPal or Stripe. Instead, you’d only encounter WePay if you happened to use one of its partnered platforms.
WePay takes this specialization in platform partnerships even further. Aside from exclusively embedding payments directly into platforms, it also supplies each software platform with its own, self-branded payment solution. For example, WePay’s partner Freshbooks (see our review) now offers a payment solution called Freshbooks Payments by WePay.
WePay calls this setup “white-label” payments for platforms, and it provides certain advantages to the platforms themselves, to the merchants who use the WePay-powered payment solution inside these platforms, and even to the end-user making the payment. We’ll touch on these benefits throughout the review.
Although facilitating fundraising for Occupy Wall Street originally put WePay on the map, the latest twist in WePay’s story came at the end of 2017 when it was bought by one of the biggest banks in the world — JP Morgan Chase. Whether or not this means WePay has officially sold out to The Man, there’s no escaping the obvious irony.
Since this change, we’ve noticed that WePay has not been spared from grappling with common issues among all payment facilitators (held funds and account instability, for example). Still, more and more platforms are deciding white-label payments are the way forward, and many choose WePay for that specialization. I admire WePay’s refusal to quit amongst such entrenched competitors, but I’m not 100% convinced the company even has itself figured out yet!
It’s worth pointing out that the audience for this review will likely be both platform owners who might partner with WePay and the merchants who use these software platforms. If you don’t find yourself in either of these two categories, but you still need card processing services, I’d suggest checking out our top merchant account providers.
There’s no denying that the multiple layers of the platform economy make reviewing WePay a bit of a hairy endeavor. Nevertheless, I’m confident we’ve gathered some good information to help you decide if WePay is worth considering for your situation.
For a quick overview, take a look at WePay’s introductory video:
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Table of Contents
Products & Services
Rating: Excellent
As you read about WePay’s features, don’t forget that WePay targets the platform owners themselves, not merchants using the platforms. Similar to WePay’s website, this section of the review is written so platform owners can understand what WePay offers. Still, I think merchants will benefit from knowing more about how platform payments work. I would not recommend skipping this section — or any section for that matter!
WePay’s website is sparse on descriptions of specific products and features. They’re more interested in explaining the overall value proposition of integrated platform payments. Here is my crack at summarizing WePay’s key offerings for platforms:
- Payment Processing: WePay is a third-party processor like Stripe or Square, as opposed to a traditional merchant account provider. WePay’s FAQs state that they currently only support US-based merchants and a growing number of Canadian merchants on a few platforms. However, we’ve noticed that WePay also has a merchant agreement for UK-based merchants listed on their Terms of Service page. They also have developer documentation for setting up UK merchants. This tells me that UK merchants can also use WePay and that the information on their webpages is most likely out of date.
- “White-Label” Payments: As a platform, you’ll get your own, self-branded payment solution when you partner with WePay, without the hassle of actually becoming a payment facilitator yourself. Your brand-name payments service will still probably have “Powered by WePay” as part of its logo. I like to think of it as more of a “gray-label.” Another common industry term is co-branded.
- Developer Documentation/API: WePay describes itself as a payments API company. As such, the developer section of the website is the best place to find concrete information about WePay’s capabilities and how they can be customized to suit your needs.
- Simultaneous Onboarding: Platforms can set up their onboarding process to include WePay’s onboarding process, minimizing extra steps for merchants. As the Merchant Onboarding Overview explains, the partner platform has the option to set up WePay for all new merchants, with further verification steps required after merchants are already selling.
- Revenue From Payments: Platforms may have the opportunity to add their markups to transaction fees. See more on this in the Fees & Rates section of this review.
- Risk Management & Fraud Protection: WePay claims to provide 100% coverage of a platform’s payments-related risk. This means that they’ll cover fraud losses and chargebacks. They also secure payment and customer information, which helps platforms achieve and maintain PCI, KYC, and OFAC compliance.
- Mobile Point Of Sale (mPOS): WePay enables white-label, mobile POS for platforms. Merchants use the platform’s app and mobile hardware to collect payments. Here again, I’d refer you to the mPOS developer section of WePay’s site for the best information. A few highlights:
- Customizable EMV-Certified Card Readers: Choose between the Moby 3000 reader or RP350x, both by Ingenico/ROAM.
- iOS & Android SDKs: Integrate payments into the platform’s mobile app.
- Fulfillment Service: This lets the platform ship readers directly from WePay’s warehouse to merchants.
- Apple Pay: Add this capability to the platform’s regular website in addition to the mobile app.
- Customizable Payouts: Platforms can choose to allow merchants daily, weekly, or monthly payouts.
- Automatic Account Updater: Merchants can retain more recurring customers with an account updater for expired and replaced cards.
Fees & Rates
Rating: Good
WePay does not list any pricing information on their website. I have to admit, however, that this isn’t too surprising considering WePay’s more complex business model.
Since WePay is a “white-label” payments provider, they work with each partnered platform individually to determine the pricing. Then, that platform communicates pricing plans to its merchants.
Once platforms have their pricing worked out with WePay, they are free to set their fees for transactions processing and exceptions processing. This means that platforms may choose to charge an additional fee on top of WePay’s rates.
In WePay’s Merchant Terms of Service, they include a few basic rates and fees that WePay will charge if the platform does not choose to negotiate a specific rate (we suspect that platforms can negotiate rates that are lower than these basic rates). Here are the basic rates that WePay charges:
- Per Transaction: 2.9% + $0.30
- Chargeback Fee: $15.00
- ACH Return Fee: $15.00
- Research Fee: $25.00 (charged if an account is deemed abandoned)
WePay also mentions that they will pass through fees for “Payment Network Liabilities” to the merchants. You can read more about those fees in Section 8 of the Terms and Conditions.
Keep in mind that the rates I’ve listed above are just examples of WePay’s basic rates. The rates and fees the platform pays depends on its agreement with WePay. In the same way, the rates and fees that merchants pay depend on their platform.
If you’re a merchant looking to process payments through one of WePay’s partnered platforms, be sure to look into the specific rates and fees offered by your platform. Those are the costs that will be the most relevant to your situation.
Before we move on, I want to quickly mention one other notable fee. In 2015, WePay introduced a rate of 1% + $0.30 for ACH payments via partner platforms. When we checked in 2016, we were able to verify that the rate had remained the same. At the time of this review update, we are not able to find any information on rates for ACH payments, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it was still 1% + $0.30.
Contract Length & Early Termination Fee
Rating: Excellent
Here, we will mainly focus on the merchants using WePay’s partnered platforms. I’m sure the platforms themselves have special contracts dictating their relationships with WePay, but we’re not privy to those. Instead, we have access to Terms of Service agreements for merchants in the US, Canada, and the UK.
These documents rightfully point out that even if a platform is offering white-label payments, the platform itself probably also has a separate merchant agreement with terms and conditions for use of the software. Bottom line: both the platform’s general-use agreement and WePay’s Terms of Service (just for payments) are important documents to understand.
Sections 26 through 28 of the WePay Terms of Service address account termination. As a merchant, you may cancel WePay’s payment service at any time with no early termination fee. While you’re looking through the rest of the terms, be sure also to note WePay’s policies on payout holds and account closures. You should also take a look at WePay’s Reserves FAQ, which covers both reserves and payout thresholds. These are common points of contention and misunderstanding when it comes to merchant aggregators — WePay included.
Sales & Advertising Transparency
Rating: Good
Now, we’re back to examining WePay’s relationship with platforms, since it doesn’t advertise directly to merchants anymore. I know this is a lot of focus-shifting in one review. Don’t blame me — blame the multi-layered platform economy. Merchants should stay engaged for this section, though. You want to know what type of company you’re dealing with for payments.
Despite any shortcomings, WePay is not a sleazy, scammy, or dishonest company. I’m still disappointed that they don’t publish pricing anymore, especially when more visible competitors do offer some hard figures. While pricing may be complicated with platforms in the mix, WePay needs to figure out a way to increase online transparency on the pricing front.
The great news about fully-integrated payments with WePay is that merchants are spared from aggressive sales agents, flashy ads, and gimmicky deals. It’s up to the software platform to “sell” its own co-branded payments provider over any others it may offer. I also like that WePay’s Terms of Service are posted, and they’re pretty easy to read. WePay has done us all the favor of simplifying all the legal jargon in a “Basically…” phrase to the right of each section. You should still do your due diligence, though, and read the Terms of Service in its entirety. You don’t want to miss important fees and requirements by just reading WePay’s paraphrasing.
All in all, WePay is doing all right in terms of transparency, but there’s still room for improvement. For example, we’d like to see the website updated with some more complete and current information. And we also want to see pricing information provided in some form or another.
Customer Service & Technical Support
Rating: Poor
In theory, WePay and its partnered platforms work together on behalf of merchants and their customers to provide support. It should help that WePay and the platforms have access to each other’s data and support records. It’s all a great theory, but it makes you wonder how well it works in reality. The answer seems to be: it depends.
Whether you’re a merchant or customer, I don’t see established guidelines for contacting the platform versus contacting WePay for support. WePay provides an email ticketing system as well as links to customer support pages for various platforms, all on its contact page. You’re invited to make the decision yourself on which route to take.
WePay’s “Customer Delight” support team (yes, that’s its actual name) is available 6 AM to 6 PM PST Monday through Friday. That time frame refers to email ticket support only. WePay indicates they’ll respond to inquiries within one business day. Live chat was offered at one point but has now vanished. The same goes for a phone number — gone. I sort of understand why big merchant aggregators avoid phone support but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
The Knowledge Center offers up a few guides and white papers that are helpful for understanding payments processing in general. However, these resources don’t give any specific information about using WePay on a day-to-day basis, which is really what I’m looking for. Honestly, I think these resources would have worked better as posts in WePay’s blog.
Fortunately, the Support Section has some decent FAQs and even answers a few questions regarding partner sites. WePay also maintains active Twitter and LinkedIn pages.
I admit I was a bit surprised to learn that WePay’s Customer Delight department won a Stevie Award in 2017. Overall, I’m underwhelmed by the support WePay provides. It’s a confusing setup for merchants and end-consumers, and the lack of phone support seems to be a common frustration among users. But maybe WePay offers outstanding support in their web tickets, winning them that award. Let us know in the comments below about your own experiences with WePay’s customer support. Were you delighted?
User Reviews
Rating: Good
Negative Reviews & Complaints
WePay maintains an A+ rating with the BBB, with 82 registered complaints in the last three years (24 in the last 12 months). Of these 82 total complaints, WePay was able to resolve 20 to the merchants’ satisfaction. Overall, 82 complaints is a fairly low number about a third-party processor that serves so many people. And while a 25% complaint resolution rate isn’t the best we’ve ever seen, it’s a respectable number. All this sums up to a pretty good record at the BBB.
However, this doesn’t mean that WePay users aren’t complaining elsewhere. A quick Google search uncovers hundreds more complaints and negative reviews. After combing through all the complaints I could find for the past two years, I was able to identify a few trends. Here are some common WePay complaints:
- Withheld Funds: Holds related to “high-risk” transactions often result in account cancellation. Relatedly, disputes over WePay’s reserve accounts also crop up occasionally. Several merchants have reported delayed and inadequate explanations for holds and terminations.
- Frozen Or Terminated Accounts: After quick initial approval, some accounts have been subsequently frozen or terminated. Merchants and WePay often dispute the proper interpretation of WePay’s business-type restrictions or whether or not subsequent verification requirements were completed properly. Problems refunding payments to customers and donors sometimes ensue.
- Long Processing Time: Some users are unhappy with the two to five day (or beyond) wait to receive funds when a “hold” is not in place.
- Poor Customer Service: Merchants say WePay’s customer support is slow to respond. In particular, merchants are frustrated by the lack of phone support.
All third-party processors have account stability issues to some degree. That’s one side effect of the approve-now-verify-later business model. And while we don’t like it, we recognize that the problem is not unique to WePay. It doesn’t hurt to read more about how to avoid holds, freezes, and terminations yourself.
This is a good time for another quick reminder to read both the platform’s and WePay’s Terms of Service and list of Prohibited Activities (Section 7 in Terms of Service). High-risk merchants may need an alternate, specialized merchant account.
Positive Reviews & Testimonials
While most complaints about WePay’s services seem to come from merchants, most positive reviews seem to come from end-consumers and donors. They often praise the help they received understanding WePay charges on their credit cards or resolving donation issues at crowdfunding sites. I noticed that these comments often praise the same support reps over and over. In particular, customers seem to appreciate a support rep named Mira. Raise a glass to Mira, everyone!
Positive feedback from merchants tends to highlight a few different factors. Here are the positive comments I’ve seen most often from merchants:
- Seamless Integration: WePay’s ability to integrate with established platforms makes it very easy for merchants to set up and use. Partners also love this quality of WePay.
- Lower Rates Through Some Platforms: Merchants on a couple of platforms commented that they were able to access lower processing rates with WePay than with another payment provider. These merchants tended to be using WePay through Zoho and Classy.
- Easy Checkout: WePay’s checkout process is simple and intuitive for the end-consumer.
To hear from the platforms themselves, you can turn to WePay’s website. You’ll find 11 video testimonials and case studies from partner platforms under the Customer Stories tab. They also occasionally interview partners for blog posts. The platforms tend to mention:
- Decreased friction in onboarding merchants to payments (within minutes!)
- Increased merchant “stickiness” to the platform long-term
- A general business boom after adding white-label payments
- Customization and control of the user experience for payments
- WePay’s niche understanding of platform needs
- Freedom to trust WePay with payments and focus on platform management instead
Final Verdict
As a third-party payment facilitator, WePay has relentlessly sought its own niche among household names like PayPal and Stripe. With such intense competition for market share, I think targeting platforms was probably a wise move for WePay. In turn, WePay’s partnered software platforms and marketplaces appear to appreciate this specialization.
This doesn’t mean WePay has cornered the market on embedded, co-branded payments. Platforms can (and should) still shop around, and platforms must examine each payments provider in light of their unique pool of merchants. This is where aspects such as customer service, account stability, fraud protection, and geographical availability of the payment service come into play.
To make direct comparisons, you’d have to look at the platform-embedded, co-branded version of each payment service. Teasing out that specific feedback may be impossible, but I can still offer some general observations. If you are a merchant based out of any country other than North America and the UK, you’ll need to look elsewhere. A few options you might consider are Stripe, Braintree, and Adyen, which all cover merchants in loads more countries. Also, if you are concerned about account stability, you might consider finding a dedicated merchant account provider like CDG Commerce or Fattmerchant.
To sum up, I don’t think WePay is a bad option for either platforms or merchants. In its current state, I’m giving WePay 4 stars. Co-branded payments may be the way of the future, but WePay’s solution is not a magic bullet. I think it still pays to keep the payment field more open for now — for platforms to retain other third-party options, and for merchants, campaigners, and donation recipients to set up more than one payment method if possible.
My main advice to merchants is to remember that the quality of a platform’s payment experience is directly tied to the quality of the platform itself. This is especially true when the two are co-branded. You can’t evaluate one without the other (which made it tough to review WePay by itself!). Understand the Terms of Service for WePay as well as the Terms of Service for the platform it’s integrated with. Examine transaction fees for the payment solution within the context of the platform’s overall pricing structure. Look at the features and reputation of both companies. I wish you the best of luck!
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Liz Hull
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To learn more about how we score our reviews, see our Credit Card Processor Rating Criteria.
Organization Name: Waveform Technology
Looks like a ton of 1 star reviews here. Complete lack of communication. This started when a large transaction was declined and wepay “customer service” just marked all my tickets as solved. One was still open but there was no way to respond to it. I tried multiple browsers but there was no submit button on the ticket. I frantically opened new tickets but they kept getting solved with no response. Finally the transaction was cancelled, and I went to Square, but WePay held on to $20,000 of my clients money for over a week. Finally, I submitted the same info to Square and they approved the transaction after about 4 -5 hours. I accidentally left my client the option to pay by credit card on the next invoice (same client, new job) and I thought since the transaction was only $3600 (I’ve processed larger transactions through wepay before) it would be ok. But no. Two more payments failed. I immediately went to Square and they went through, both combined into one $8000 transaction. We[don’t]Pay’s customer service is a complete joke. Any response always seems automated, like there really isn’t a person there at all. And for all I know, there isn’t! No way to call them. I quickly cancelled my account. Good riddance!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Good Day Pet Sitters, LLC
Run the other way!I’m in the pet care industry and many of us nationwide have to use WePay because our scheduling software requires it. Now we’re on the 7th day of “technical difficulties releasing funds.” None of us are giant companies. Just dog walkers and pet sitters. But none of us have been paid in a week. We’ve received 2 generic emails of “sorry for any inconvenience.” None of us however have been told when they will get the money in our accounts. This is incredibly stressful.If you’re reading this, I want you to know that it’s happened multiple times and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it but wait and check your bank account every morning.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Pro 5
We pay has zero customer service. No phones, just email. They just don’t care about you or your business. They shut ours down after we started having large sales because they didn’t want chargebacks. Our business is wholesale and there are zero to very little chargebacks. And now they are holding large sums of money for 60 days. These people are the worst.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Do not use WePay. As a payment processor they allow software to utilize their platform that doesn’t work correctly, and their support defaults to lying about it. We use a donation platform that used WePay, and through that platform we needed to cancel all of our recurring donations. We cancelled them all in that system, and that system continued to submit charges to WePay. We contacted WePay who told us they couldn’t help with the cancellations, but then the vendor told us that the only way to solve their problem was for WePay to cancel the donations, even though WePay told us they could do nothing. As of this writing, they’re still stealing money from our donors regularly (which we then have to individually refund) but we can’t terminate our account because if we do that, we lose access to all reporting data which we may need for a future audit. This is incredibly anti-customer behavior not just to me as an organization, but to donors looking to support non-profits. They are literally engaging in theft and lying about methods to solve it. Stay far, far away from any platform that utilizes WePay!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
This is the most horrible company and experience we’ve ever had. they do not have a method in which they can escalate your concern or refer to a supervisory team. They cannot give you a timeline in which your deposit will be made to your account, they will only say that they will get to when they can get to it and once deposited it will take 2 to 5 days but no definitive date. Their fees are rather high and unlike wonderful Apple Pay, PayPal or square and others they really have no way to contact them by phone! any of the other companies you can reach by phone in seconds . Stay away from wepay Unless you want to get jerked around and have no idea where or when you’re going to get your money. You are totally at their mercy which is so unprofessional.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Did they ever deposit your funds?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
How exactly did you have a phone conversation with wepay. I think that this is a phony review and paid by wepay to be written.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi S,
Our writers typically do try to call the vendor they are reviewing as part of their research process, using whatever contact information is available at the time of the review. To address your concern about the validity of our reviews, please read our posts on negativity bias and how this site makes money to better understand how Merchant Maverick delivers real, unbiased reviews to our readers.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Awful service, would not recommend. As many others have said they take a ridiculous amount of time to process payments (2 weeks or longer) to a bank account. No option for support other than e-mail, which is ludicrous for an organization processing credit cards and interfacing with banks.Pick a reliable processor like your local bank. How they get such positive publicity and a BBB A+ rating is beyond me.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
BEWARE OF WEPAY!!! THEY WILL NOT RELEASE YOUR FUNDS!
DO NOT SIGN UP WITH THIS SCAMMING BUSINESS!
I signed up with them, they took all of my money over $6000 and No one answers the emails anymore!!!!
STAY AWAY FROM WEPAY!!!!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Wepay is HORRIBLE. Ive been using stripe and have had an excellent experience, I tried wepay just to diversify a little bit. I use ZOHO subscriptions so it wasnt to difficult to add wepay. After I was setup I added two new customers to the wepay gateway in ZOHO. I added customers the same way I normally do with Stripe. What happened next is almost unbelievable to me. The payments initially went through fine. About 3-4 days later I got an email from my customer. They forwarded me emails they got from wepay saying the payments have been cancelled. I then got an email from wepay saying “oh sorry, payments werent done right, dont worry we are in touch with your customers.”Ummm what? Wepay contacted my customers. I thought this was absolutely ridiculous. In my opinion this made me look like an idiot to my customers.I then signed up to wepay looking for support. Only to find nothing but a submit support ticket option. Which I did. 3-4 days I got a response. 3-4 days! And in the response, they didnt answer all my questions. To conclude, avoid this company. Use stripe and enjoy much better service and chat support!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
We pay is garbage. This is the third week I am trying to get in contact with them because of a problem with a customer that tryed to scam and it looks like they are in favor with the scammer. They never answer to me and now I got charged back. I am assuming that they want to stay with all the money and not even returning to the client.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I joined wepay through infusionsoft for ease of set up. Bad move. they have no technical help or customer service and no dashboard to speak of. I do get my money quickly but it is near impossible to get international transactions to go through. Going back to Stripe
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Merchant Maverick, take a look at the comments, maybe its time to review your rating which pops up on google results and gives potential clients a very skewed concept of what to expect from this awful company. I run a small business and WePay was the only ACH service available through my SAAS. This is my first and last week with them. Out of the 5 clients who have attempted payment, 2 were not able to connect their accounts with no explanation why and 1 was able to connect but her payment was canceled days later, again with no explanation. For someone who runs a boutique service designed to make my client’s busy lives easier, making it impossible to figure out how to pay me is completely unacceptable, as is WePay not answering my phone call or email. 24 hours wait for info is not ok when I have an upset client.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I really wish I would have performed some due diligence before selecting WePay as our preferred payment processor for a new website we just launched. What a nightmare! We are a crowd funding website and our first 5 donations to a campaign owner were cancelled and the user’s account with zero explanation other than “they do not conform to our terms and service policy and we cannot tell you specifically why your account was cancelled”.The campaign owner is confused.. I am confused and I have found WePay to be a very unprofessional organization and their customer service is certainly not what they claim as “customer delight”. I reviewed Paypal and Stripe as payment processors and selected WePay because of it’s simplicity and each of API integration. I did not like the fact that usage is limited to USA bank accounts but I expect the majority of our website traffic to be in the USA.I regret selecting WePay and we will immediately start working on an API interface to PayPal which by the way is more difficult to implement and get through their vendor approval process but there are definitely advantages to PayPal. I did not like the Stripe user interface for setting up a new account via the API because the questions asked on their sign up form are “b2b” centric. Stripe expects each person who creates a Stripe account to be a business that is selling products so that ask business related questions which can be confusing to individuals who simply are running a campaign to collection donations for a cause or charity.My suggestion is, do your homework before selecting a payment processor and put WePay at the bottom of your list. They are not even worthy of one star. I had to shut my website down for several delays in order to switch to a new payment processor and contact my campaign owners to explain why their donations were refunded!!!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
If I could give them negative stars I would. I’m writing to warn any business owner that using this company is a mistake. Unfortunately I chose to use WePay on a recommendation of my CRM, Infusionsoft who has partnered with them. WePay froze my account after processing one payment saying that they determined my business to be high risk. Isn’t that something that should have been determined before offering me service? I had no communication and no answers from WePay or Infusionsoft for over 6 weeks. Anyone who has started their own business can understand how detrimental it is to not have access to the money you rightfully earned in your first 2 months. This company is unprofessional and will only cause you trouble, so save yourself the headaches!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I’d give a negative star if I could.WePay, be wary of them. They are the so-called payment processors for GoFundMe and FaithLauncher. There was something that went wrong with my account with them. I have no clue as to what. They won’t and don’t work with you. It took forever to get a response back from them, and their response of:”we’re not able to process payments for your account. Our banks and processors hold us to a strict guideline on what we can and cannot process through our site. Unfortunately, we will not be able to provide you or your business with our services.With regard to any questions you might have as to why this might have happened, unfortunately, I have no information for you. Our review process is proprietary and, therefore, no information is given out in situations like these.”…simply isn’t good enough. So my warning is to be wary of “WePay” itself. They have EXTREMELY poor business practices. I set this up as a fundraising opportunity through GoFundMe and FaithLauncher for my daughters mission trip to Puerto Rico, and even had some donations that now won’t see the light of day.Please feel free to share on social media, but be sure to tag WePay, so the warning gets out.You can see a screen shot of this conversation here:
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
This company is not even worth giving one star to. For one, I started a fundraiser in the beginning of may through Go Fund Me. We Pay is who they use to pay out the funds. They made me wait eight days and not once deposited a dime into my account. They expected me to continue to wait another eight days when they clearly took money from each donation that was given to me. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND PAYPAL…they have a phone number you can call, unlike WEPAY, you can’t get ahold to anyone over the phone, which means they are a big rip off!!!!!!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Susan,
I am currently having the exact same problem and I am super frustrated. Can I ask, once you contacted Paypal, did you receive your funds? And How so? Any help I can get is greatly appreciated!
-karina
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Hi Susan,
we have been ripped off by WePay and there is no response or communications from them. Our password was changed and two unauthorized withdrawals were made.
I agree with you, they don’t deserve one star. We are seeking more people to join the complaints for the attorney general.
Joe
and I admire your cause, we volunteer in our area (New England
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DO NOT USE WEPAY. They have switched from providing any real customer service to email and chat support only. You can not get a real answer or any real support. I had a chargeback that I disputed and it did not get reversed as WePay did nothing to dispute it. And due to the chargeback. they withheld all customer charges for almost a month. I had to constantly beg for support and get my funds. Their actions are almost criminal.
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Janelle,
we have had the same experience. Two, count them, two unauthorized withdrawals from our bank account!!!! Our password on WePay was changed while this took place. A word to everyone out there, beware!!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Big warning to everyone, don’t do business with WepayOur company sells In-vitro diagnostic test kits for home use. We applied with our webshop several weeks ago. Everything was easy and fine. We verified our bank account and went through their trust centre.After our bank account was verified, we bought their expensive Magento payment plugin on a 3rd party developers website. Our developer has put a week developing in it to get it working.Transactions were going fine and nothing seemed to be the problem, but that was until the first withdrawal. Without any reasons mentioned, it was canceled. I contacted customer support and they said it was because their Trust and Safety team is concerned about our business not being based in the United States.This is nonsense! On their website, in our account we can select which country our company is from, that can be the Netherlands. We clearly mentioned that we are a Dutch entity with a local distributor in the US on our website. If their service is only limited to US-based companies then why put such option in their website anyway? Why didn’t they check out our website before accepting payments from our customers?Anyway, I have informed them about this and they said they would keep our money for 60 days during high risk chargeback now and cancel all pending payments and closed our account. They didn’t care whether we already shipped all orders. They clearly do not care about their merchants businesses. This is a big warning to everyone, don’t do business with Wepay, they just don’t care about anyone.We’re very disappointed and still in shock that such bad unprofessional practice still exist these days.
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I’ve only had a few transaction with Wepay and in those few they have debited my account for a chargeback in-which they had double bill my client in the first place. My client was refunded their money twice and Wepay charge me a $30 “junk fee” to process the request for their mistake. I would recommend not working with Wepay.
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I generated $68,000 in revenue last year, mostly through WePay buttons. But WePay decided to drop all their services for small businesses in 2014 and DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER TO SEND AN EMAIL to let me know. I had malfunctioning buttons on my website which cost me THOUSANDS of dollars, until a user finally brought it to my attention. Real professional operation. I’ll be telling everybody what a terrible company this is.
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An account was set up for our nonprofit,but donors from UK could not donate through we pay,what can we do,we still want to use we pay for our online donation.
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My company started in 1989 and has been listed on Dun and Bradstreet since 1991. Wow, I’ve been in business only 21 years longer than them. I am a registered US government contractor and have contracts with several agencies such as the US Army and the Naval Air Warfare Center. They declined payment because they said my business is at high risk for charge backs. In the last 24 year I have never had a charge back. These guy are a joke. Don’t waste your time and money with these fools. Use PAYPAL!
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Wepay is a nightmare. I was using their virtual terminal before they started advertising it. Their customer service was good and so was their department that handled the terminal transactions. Then they did away with phone service in all their departments and started outsourcing overseas, something they told me when I hired them for my credit card processing that they would never do. Merchants were left with emails that made absolutely no sense from people who obviously had no grasp of the English language. I fired Wepay. Businesses forget that they are being hired to provide a service. Some businesses that provide services have an attitude like they are doing merchants a favor. The attitude is not acceptable. They are being hired to do a job, and if they screw up, they will be fired. When enough people fire Wepay, they will no longer be in business.
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I’m a new WePay customer. My second, large payment is now “pending” through WePay. I have so far not seen a penny. Their customer service is slow to respond and apparently trained in Stepford manners. I’ve just looked at their BBB complaints, which are surprisingly familiar. Once (if?) I finally get my payment, I’m quitting WePay.
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ANOTHER TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.WePay prides itself as being different from Paypal and while Paypal certainly has a few issues of its own, WePay is very far behind. It also prides itself for its personalized customer service, but that is easily said when they only communicate to inform you that your account is being terminated. In the meantime, emails remain unanswered.This is my experience. I signed up with WePay and within a few minutes, I was good to go. I filled in some very basic information, such as name, phone, address and SS #/ EIN. I also uploaded a link with reviews from our clients.As for many other customers, WePay started processing payments for me and then one of them stayed in pending mode. I contacted customer support and Charlie informed me that our information couldn’t be verified and suggested to re-enter it, which we did. Then…. nothing. After several unanswered email, I was simply informed that my information couldn’t be verified and that therefore the payment had been cancelled and my account terminated.WePay did not even ask me for proof of ID and address. Their procedures seem very arbitrary and do not display proper due diligence, in a field in which it is absolutely paramount.My customer and myself were left hanging for 3 full days, after which I but also my client received an email from WePay in which they explained that they would not be processing any further payment for us. For a company which prides itself with customer support, this is an interesting one. Our client, very understandably, has now lost trust in service providers such as WePay and Paypal, but also, questions our honesty.It is appalling that WePay can so quickly damage a reputation which I have put so much work into building.I warn current customers and people considering WePay. My situation is far from isolated. Do not give them a chance to damage your business.
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i think i know why this wepay service is terrible , if u read their terms of use under ” Prohibited Activities ” you find that almost all online business activities are ” Prohibited ” , that is why u and others have troubles with them , i really do not know what business activities they accept if they do not allow any type of onlne business !!!!!! i will not sign up !!
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SCAM! SCAM! SCAM!Worst company I ever worked with. I have been their customer for more than 3 months. I have processed around 3k in payments. Yesterday I have recieved an email saying that my account cannot be verified.So I contacted support:Chris: Hey there→I have just received an email from you saying We could not verify the information you submitted to verify your account Kurt Winter.→My name is Kurt Winter→and my email is info@STOREBRONX.NET→I just didnt get it. I have been your customer for a whileChris: let me see here→sureChris: okChris: Unfortunately we won’t be able to process payments for your account. Our banks and processors hold us to strict guidelines on what we can and can’t process for, and we won’t be able to offer you our services.Chris: I am really sorry for the inconvenience→well. I still got money on your account→And I need them as soon as possible→helloooooo——- no response.Dont even try to open account with this scammers!
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Kurt,
frustrating isn’t it?!
The attorney generals in our collective states need to hear all this. Our password was literally changed unbeknownst to us and then two withdrawals were made totaling over 900 dollars. This certainly is criminal.
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They take their 2.9% off the top and when you tried to deposit the remainder into your account it takes weeks and if you call their customer service they have no answers but they will escalate. Never hear back and still waiting for money, been 2 weeks.
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Four days after accepting our first transaction for $25.00, and after we had already shipped the items, WePay declined the previously approved transaction, stating that they didn’t have enough information on our business (thanks for telling us after the fact). We spent a couple hours on the phone with customer service updating the account, answering questions and making changes online. We were then told that, while they couldn’t do anything about the initial $25.00 loss, we were set to go, and could process payments with no problems. We were skeptical, but finally processed another payment for just over $100. We waited four days to ship the items (over a weekend), and finally, thinking that we were fine, went ahead and shipped. The very next day, WePay declined the payment again, citing the same issue of not knowing enough about our business. After being put on hold and hung up on, talking to people who couldn’t speak English, and not having emails returned, we finally spoke to a customer service representative who said that we needed to update our profile, but there was nothing she could do about the $100 payment that we were now out. After arguing with her for almost an hour, she determined that we were selling items that were not allowed under their terms of service, and that suddenly became the reason that the payments were declined, even though the items we were selling WERE NOT LISTED in their terms of service as prohibited.We filed a BBB complaint, and in the back and forth of that process, they said that they encourage people to use their virtual terminal in face to face transactions, but couldn’t come up with a valid reason for declining the payments other than needing more business information, even though we were told we were ready to process.We have found many other people who have had the same issues that we have with WePay. Be very careful when dealing with them as they will end up costing you money, apologizing all over the place, but doing nothing of substance to fix the problem or compensate you for the money they cost you.
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June 28th 2013 I was with wepay for 4 days. Transactions moved appropriately and we processed approximately $1,000 in transactions with them. After the first days we noticed the “reserve” Which means that once you reach a $500 limit they will hold everything after that for 7 days. We meet and exceed that mark daily. Not initially a problem but then they began to review the account. I provided personal information, business reviews, tax information, Accreditations etc. During the review process they continued to accept payments from my website but placed them all on a “Pending” status. Then at the end of the business day, conveniently, they closed my account supposedly refunding my clients and holding onto $256 dollars. Classifying my business as a “high risk” They made their money off of me and thats that. So I am filing formal complaints with the better business Bureau. As of July 15th 2013 WePay has yet to resolve this issue, and is refusing to cooperate in providing proof of a “dispute” they claim was the cause of the account closure. Do not trust any positive reviews of this fraudulent company they pay for them.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.