Shannon Vissers

Designed to be a smaller, more accessible version of the popular Clover Station POS system, the Clover Mini comes with a built-in receipt printer, a USB hub (to allow for interface with peripheral hardware), and a customer-facing camera. Read on for more details and a comprehensive review of the Clover Mini.

At first glance, Clover seems like an ideal POS solution. It’s flexible, feature-rich, and functional. However, it’s not a cheap product. But if you want a simple, attractive POS solution — and don’t mind taking a risk on customer service and payment processing — you could do a lot worse than Clover and its many different offerings.

Can you buy a used Clover POS? Absolutely! Should you? No! While you can certainly find a used Clover POS system for sale on eBay or Amazon, it’s never a good idea to buy one. Used Clover POS are not reprogrammable and new systems are always sold with a merchant services contract — which you should never enter lightly.

If you run a high-risk business or have had a hard time getting approved for a merchant account, Instabill might be your saving grace.

Leaders Merchant Services offers the Clover POS suite and a variety of other tools for merchants, but it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of transparency, pricing, and overall ethical practices.

In May 2019, Global Payments, another very large direct processor from Georgia, announced that it was acquiring TSYS for $21.5 billion. The combined organization will operate under the Global Payments brand name, and the TSYS name will eventually disappear. However, mergers of this size take a long time to complete, and as of May 2020, TSYS still has its own website, which lists the company as ‘TSYS – A Global Payments Company.’ We haven’t received any indication of how Global Payments plans to transition existing TSYS customers into its system, but we expect that you will probably be switched over to a Global Payments contract at some point. If you’re a merchant looking for a new provider, now is not the time to sign up with TSYS.

Payline Data offers interchange-plus pricing for all its merchants, with discounted rates for nonprofits and medical organizations. On top of that, every plan includes a gateway and virtual terminal, with no long-term contracts. What’s not to love?

Pivotal Payments rebranded as Nuvei to escape a bad reputation for poor service and hidden fees, but in the process of rebranding, it appears that Nuvei is embracing many of the same tactics that led to its bad reputation in the first place. Some businesses might get a good deal, but most should stay far away.

Flagship’s one notable feature — the lack of a long-term contract or early termination fee — is becoming increasingly common across the entire processing industry. Other Flagship products and services, while generally quite good, are readily available elsewhere. When weighed against the company’s reputation for high rates and fees, and poor customer service, we think you’ll be better served with a different provider. Read more in our full review of Flagship Merchant Services.

Sam’s Club Merchant Services uses the appeal of the bulk-discount warehouse business to bring in merchants, but the reality is that processing payments through Sam’s Club is likely to be far more costly for small businesses.