Overview
In this article of Leap Payments, a merchant account provider known for serving both traditional and high-risk businesses, we'll examine their transition from Elavon to WorldPay affiliations and their specialized offerings, including a cash discount program. We'll focus on their services for high-risk and e-commerce businesses, highlighting their lifetime rate lock and transparent pricing.
We'll assess the pros and cons of Leap Payments, weighing their secure processing and support for high-risk businesses against potential hidden fees and customer support issues. By analyzing customer reviews, both positive and negative, we'll provide a comprehensive view of the company's performance.
We'll also cover their legal standings, customer support efficiency, and a detailed analysis of their fee structure and contract terms. Finally, we'll look into Leap Payments' internal sales practices and overall market reputation, offering a well-rounded perspective for businesses considering their services.
About Leap Payments
Leap Payments is a merchant account provider that was founded in 2005 according to the Better Business Bureau. Leap Payments is a former reseller of Elavon contracts, but it appears they are associated with WorldPay now. This is likely due to a conflict between Elavon and Leap Payments in 2020 over a large number of merchant losses. Leap is capable of placing both traditional and high-risk business types, but its marketing is much more focused on high-risk merchant accounts. According to the company's website, it also offers merchants the option to choose a cash discount program.
Leap Payments Products and Services
Payment Processing
Leap Payments provides credit card processing solutions for a wide range of businesses, including those classified as high-risk. Their offerings include retail merchant accounts designed to facilitate efficient debit and credit card transactions.
High-Risk Merchant Accounts
Specializing in high-risk merchant accounts, Leap Payments caters to businesses that banks often consider too risky for credit card processing.
E-Commerce Merchant Accounts
Leap Payments offers solutions for e-commerce businesses to accept credit cards online without incurring high additional costs.
Rate Lock and Transparent Pricing
Leap Payments guarantees a lifetime rate lock, ensuring that their rates remain constant for the duration of the account. They use interchange plus pricing, promoting it as a transparent method for credit card processing.
Additional Services
Leap Payments provides various additional services, including mobile processing, next-day funding, online invoicing, point-of-sale systems, and a virtual terminal. They also supply equipment for businesses and serve a variety of industries, especially those in high-risk categories.
Aden
Our entire experience with Leap Payments was awful, a classic bait and switch. We dealt with Cliff Zone and he used a series of shady tactics and we got ripped off as a result.
We signed on with them in January of 2019. After speaking with him on the phone we were excited about the low rate he promised us of 2.99%. We repeatedly asked him through email and recorded phone calls if 2.99% was the ONLY percentage we would be charged and have multiple confirmations from him that we would not be charged anything other than 2.99%, plus the small transaction fees we also agreed to. He was responsive and helpful in getting us on board and that is where it all went downhill.
After about 2 months we started noticing that the fees they were billing us were unusually high, far above the 2.99 that we agreed to, and that Cliff promised us we would be paying. We asked him where our transaction statements were and he started ignoring our emails. After 10 days, I emailed him again and demanded access to our statements and he finally responded that he would ask someone to help us get set up to access to the statement portal. I was shocked when I logged in and saw that we were being charged more than 6% per transaction, and not the 2.99% that Cliff assured us we would be paying. I knew that his ignoring my emails asking for statements was because there was something shady going on and I was right.
I immediately emailed Cliff and demanded an explaination and he ignored the email. After my second email he replied that he would order a “rate review” which I assumed was because they made an error and would be fixing and refunding the extra % fees they were charging us.
When I didn’t hear back for 8 days, I emailed again asking what the status of our fee refunds was and that is when my phone started ringing. On the call he explained to me that the rate he signed us up with was 2.99% ABOVE INTERCHANGE, and the above 6% we were being charged was correct, and that there would be no refund. I explained to him that looking back on the emails and calls I can see that he assured me repeatedly that we wouldn’t be charged any percentages more than 2.99%.
Cliff lied his way into making the sale, and then became evasive in order to keep us from finding out what was going on. He apologized and explained that it must have been a miscommunication. Fortunately for us, we have every phone call and email with him recorded (including him talking about slimy tactics to get around regulations with the credit card companies). Again, looking back on everything, and having an attorney as one of the owners of our business it is clear that Cliff used fraud and deceptive tactics to gain our business, costing us hundreds of dollars in additional fees we did not agree to. We will be pursuing legal action against Leap Payments (and also sending all the emails and recordings to Elavon) and possibly a class action as we are obviously not the first people they have done this to based on the other reviews.
Related: How To Get Lower Processing Fees Without Switching
Dylan
LEAP will charge you a whole slew of phantom fees. When you call to ask they say “they are charged by the bank” and cannot be reversed. CHOOSE ANOTHER PROVIDER
This post will help: Find and Eliminate Hidden Costs In Your Monthly Statement
-Phillip
Adrian Warren
Steve Matarazzo.
If you have plans of getting a merchant account in about 6 months. Work with this company. And don’t expect any explanation for the waiting. They don’t know what there doing. I countinusly send in paper work and all they say is I can’t work with an incomplete application. And when I ask what do you mean they just say it’s incomplete?… it’s it your job to obtain the merchant account?!
2. This guy also said he’s trying to get me a low risk merchant when any company I’ve worked for like mine is always considered high risk. So when he said that I was kinda worried. What is he lieing about on paper work to have this processed?
3. When asking. What is the wait and what he means by incomplete application they said they don’t like to be PRESSURED while working…
From The Editor
This Post Might Help: Best High Risk Merchant Accounts
Sandie Cardinale
DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!! They are thieves and liars. They are holding $9,000.00 of my money and was told that it was a loan. It is not a loan my customers paid for services from us. We are a small business and can not afford for them to hold this money. Amber Rivers said she will review my case on December 21,2018 As long as there are no charge backs she will determine then when I can have my funds released, This has been going on since August 2018. Cliff who helped set up the account said it would be okay to run all my charges we were holding til we started using this company that night. I listened to him and ran $9000.00 worth of charges. I was told they closed my account because it was fraud. We have been in business for 14 years we are not fraud. Apparently I should have never ran all of the cards in one night. If I wasn’t told it was okay I would have never done this. They do not care about you or your business. I am at a stand still and explained this to them they told me it wasn’t there problem. Cliff said he would call over to the bank. We are now in September I never received a call back from Cliff, No money from Leap and they have stopped taking my calls. Good luck to you if you decide to use this company. I will be calling the Attorney Generals office and BBB today to file a complaint.
From The Editor
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Brian Vaughn
Never and I mean never use Leap Payments contractors, we are a contractor and got screwed over big time. Bogus chargeback dispute started by American Express and sent to Leap Payments our card processor soon to be exprocessor and defendant in a lawsuit along with American Express. Amex started a bogus dispute making it look like our customer did it after our customer used his prepaid Amex cars to pay us for work we did. Amex tried to call the customer since it thinks everyone is a criminal so they could verify the charge of $772.50 he paid us with, but when they didn’t reach him after calling what looks like once and they didn’t even leave a voicemail and then they tried calling us but also didn’t leave a voicemail, Amex’s employee just opened a bogus dispute and put in reason as work not completed to customers satisfaction or not completed at all. Which is a completely made up lie by Amex. Our customer three way called us and Amex where Amex said what dispute we don’t show anything and said they would as a precaution send an email up to their chargeback department telling them the customer called in and said pay that charge and nothing is in dispute and that he didn’t dispute anything about that charge ever. Still Amex or Leap Payments pulled all the money out of our business Checking and over drew the acct forcing me to have to scrap money out of thin air to put our business acct back in the green. On top of that Amex slandered our business by making up the bogus dispute by putting reason as work not done or not completed to customers satisfaction. Our customer proved to us that he never even called them by the three way call we listened in on with him after he had called them once before earlier that morning. We are taking legal action against Leap Payments for refusing to even investigate the fraud by Amex we reported to them about this bogus dispute they opened and suing Amex for making up the fake dispute in the first place. Our relationship with our customer is damaged by these actions, our bank acct history and banking relationship with our bank has been damaged and we spent many hours on phone calls and emails and filing out the chargeback paperwork that Leap Payments demands be filled out to get our money back with in a week and a half during Thanksgiving week. Time that should have been spent enjoying the holiday with family that is visiting was instead spent scrambling to move money around to cover our over drawn acct at our bank and on the phone and on emails and getting the run around by Leap Payments and Amex. These companies pitch so much about consumer fraud and threaten you about the risk of being hacked and keeping customer card numbers or personal info, yet when you report fraud by one of their own they refuse to lift a finger, just shows you what you really mean to them as a merchant
Dan Sheehan
This company charges an average of 3.81% per transaction when you add in all of their “extra” fees. I would be happy to back that up with statements if you have an interest. The rate is very high for what they do.
Paul
Had an account. Faxed a cancellation request, was promptly called by the rep who said he had no problem cancelling my account because it was not generating them any income. Several months later I noticed I was still being charged for the account. Called the rep who said he wasn’t able to refund the charges and it was my fault for not noticing it sooner. He then said they never received the fax request to cancel, which was what prompted him to call me and tell me he had no problems cancelling my measly account. But like he said, it was my fault. I trusted him.
As the previous commenter stated, they are crooks.
Will Detterman
Paul – I’m very disappointed to learn about your experience here on a review site. As I don’t have any details on your situation due to the anonymity of this site so I really can’t respond directly as I don’t know the details of your case. I can tell you that we work very hard to make sure that we respond to client issues immediately and never hold your account hostage. We also have multiple people monitoring our incoming faxes so that we don’t miss requests, so it appears that the original close request was not received which led to your issue. I’m sorry that you had a bad experience and can assure you that we strive for perfection every day for all of our merchants.
Scott
These guys are bunch of CROOKS!!! They suspended my account out of nowhere when they already approved us to process with them and said we didn’t meet their approved business criteria and froze $1600 of our funds and said it could take up to 280 days until we are paid!!!! Don’t use this merchant account they are crooks and will steal your money!!!! They also go by Evalon as well! BEWARE!!!
Will Detterman
This merchant is selling Kratem powder which is an illegal substance in most states, of course they did not disclose this to us or our processor Elavon with their account application. When Elavon found out what they were actually selling, their funds were held and their account closed as we do not support businesses operating illegally. So it’s ironic that this merchant would call us “crooks”. While it’s disheartening to receive any complaints, this merchant should use their energy to sell legal products and focus on their business, not trying to bring down others.