In the late 2000s, as a broke college student struggling to make ends meet, I was contacted by a merchant services company after uploading my resume to a job listings website. This company promised substantial commissions and ongoing residual income for simply persuading businesses to accept credit card payments. It seemed straightforward enough—after all, what business doesn’t need to process credit card payments? Following a phone interview with a persuasive “sales director,” I found myself embarking on what I believed would be an easy job that would significantly boost my bank account with reliable monthly income and large sales commissions. However, the lessons I learned would profoundly change my life in ways I could never have imagined.
After completing my sales training, I hit the ground running, eager to make sales. This broke college student was determined to improve his financial situation! My first attempt at a cold call, with no prior appointment, ended with a burly man in his 50s yelling at me to leave, claiming he had been “totally robbed” by someone like me before. As I hastily exited, puzzled and intimidated by his reaction, I couldn’t help but wonder what he meant. Throughout the day, I encountered similar hostility from other business owners, all expressing disdain for the industry I had been so excited to join that morning. Confused and curious, I decided to shift my approach from selling to listening.
I quickly uncovered that the merchant services sector was riddled with unethical practices, including hidden fees, deceptive marketing, fine-print traps, and much more. It dawned on me that I had nearly been tricked by a dubious company into selling overpriced services under contracts with long-term commitments, all without being fully aware of what I was promoting. Outraged, I resigned from that company but learned that there were indeed ethical credit card processing companies that treated their clients fairly. Over the next four years, I worked for one such company, assisting hundreds of businesses in securing cost-effective processing solutions. Yet, I also met many more who had been misled and trapped in onerous service agreements. Determined to help people steer clear of these unscrupulous providers, I launched this website in my spare time, dedicating myself to researching and sharing my findings on every merchant account provider I could investigate.
Gradually, more and more business owners began to discover my articles. As word spread, search engines started to rank my content highly, amplifying its reach. My efforts were making a difference! Eventually, the website garnered enough traffic to enable me to leave my job and focus on it full-time, a journey that has now spanned over a decade. This path has not been without its challenges; unscrupulous company owners have tried to intimidate and sue me into silence on several occasions. Yet, I have stood firm against each threat. Here I am, continuing to publish reviews and articles, hoping to safeguard others from the pitfalls of the credit card processing industry.
If you believe in my mission and wish to contribute, please share my articles on your websites and social media. Thank you for visiting!
Dénes Szilárd
Paymill: Simply, it’s ridiculous. How I get to this conclusion? Read below.
I fought for more than 5 months to get my account activated, and then my brain just blowed up.
Here is how it happened:
• They asked for several contracts, several proofs about my legal business. I had to make a contract even with my importer, who is not really existing because I am dropshipping. It was painful to find somebody who signs a Supplier Agreement.
• I had to send this Supplier Agreement to them on my money.
• I had to send them another bunch of contracts on my money, because they forget out something from the package.
• After this I had to translate my business certificate to English and certify by a notary. The real issue started here. My business certificate is released by the Government of Hungary (my country). Is absolutely legal. The legal translator office translated my already legal business certificate with the stamp of the government, and they told me that is non-sense to give it to a notary, because the governmental stamp is above the notary stamp, legally.
Anyhow, an official translation agency can certify a business certificate in Europe. Germany is in Europe as well. So I have a legal and legally translated f*cking legal business document at this point.
• I forwarded the translated document (with the governmental and agency stamp) to Paymill, and they pushed back with the reason that there is no notary stamp on it. After explaining the stuff above, their answer it was that: it’s a mandatory. For who?
• And then, I got very upset, and told them that you can go to hell, with my 50$ blocked in my account. (and with the other ~80-90$ what I spent on them)
• Anyhow, they have a 350 euro threshold, below which they do not pay you out. So you have to collect at least 350 euro before your first payment, but you will never get activated. Hahaha. Is this a reliable business model? You have to invest in your payment gateway to get paid out somehow?
• Simply, it’s ridiculous. So Paymill can go to hell. I do not recommend to use them, even if it’s very simply to register, and they have no monthly fees.
This post will help: Best E-Commerce Merchant Accounts
– Phillip
Beate Matthäi
Terrible Experience with Paymill!!!
Since some years we have been using Paymill without any problems – but since the have a new partner Bank Paymill is for smaller erchants absolutely NO GO.
If you recieve a creditcard Payment you may wait half a year until you get the money into your account.
You are completely helpless cause they just don’t react- they keep the money and they don’t answer support ticlkets.
For larger companies they might be ok – but for small startups – BEWARE and pay great attention with the contract, cause you can wait for your money until you yourself go broke until you receive the money in your account…
From The Editor
This Post Might Help: How to Make Your Payment Processor Release Your Money
Sara
Terrible, not paying out, not replying on e-mails. Vert unprofessional. Look for other solution!
Had one transaction when we started using system, and they didn’t paid this after almost 4 months! Not even trying to explain why they didn’t pay, simply not answering e-mails or answering after couple of sent e-mails without real reply.
Neven Miculinić
After two mounts of consultation two manager, after that I send
many documents of my company, document of origin of goods, document of authentic of goods, after I make changes on my website that Paymill request.
They say me that I must pay 25 EUR fee/month, because they not
support my currency (HRK). On Paymill website is specified that they work
with Croatia and that they do not take month/fee.
Pierre Bastoul
Hello sir,
I would like to add my own experience.
I am a Paymill customer since 2 years now. Our business is a classical ecommerce shop, not classified as “risky”.
About the enrollment process
The process of enrollment was very long, about 6 monthes.
They were unable to write the contract with the fees negociated, I had to re-send all the emails from the sale person.
They asked me for new documents every monthes, sometimes asking the same doc twice…
About the contract,
Days after signin the contract, I’ve received a new contract from a bank I’ve never heard of. That was the day I discovered that Credorax will provide the bank account and they will acquire our payments. Before that it was a UK bank. This discovery was coming with a new train of legal information to read, new agreements to sign, and again, company, olders ID, nature of business to provide…
The payment settlements
The sale person said I will have a daily money transfert, he never told me about a rolling reserve. When reading the banck contract, I was thinking I was at the end of this sooo long process, I discovered that they asked for a 30 days rolling reserve. I decided to shut down discussions, and go for a new provider. They finaly came back to propose a weekly transfert on friday (that’s what they offer now). But with practice, I understand now what a weekly tranfert does really mean. The transfert day is friday and must be a working day, if not, the transfert will be on next tuesday. Plus, first transfert will be issued 10 days after first week. So, every week you get the money of the 10 days before the preceding week, not the last 10 days. Finaly, they keep 7 + 10 days. That’s a lot of money. This is the real working of a weekly settlement, that is not explained clearly on their website and anybody.
About our unique chargeback
3 weeks ago we had our first chargeback in 2 years. The goods were sended a month before, just after the card transaction. The transaction of €60 was immediatly canceled by Paymill. They asked me to write the detail of the transaction for VISA, they only want it in english which is not my native language. Asking again informations they already have like the date of the transaction, the hour, the name on the card, the nature of my business, if I provide goods or services… the url of the website and so…. Sorry, just 2 things they did not have already: an invoice of the goods, the address of delivery, the phone number of the customer. That was really painfull and took much time. They told me that they will work with bank and VISA for a resolution. I’ve asked for the reason of the chargeback, they give me a generic list of possible reasons, I just had to guess wich one is the good for that case.
After 2 weeks I received an email asking me to make a choice:
1/ provide more information “to prove transaction is valid beyond any doubt”… send that infos to VISA, and proceed for a pre-arbitration. If I loose, I will be charged for €540
2/ stop now the process, Paymill will charge m ofr €25 and money for that transaction is lost, definitely.
Is my undestanding limited ? I can not provide more informations, I just did my merchand work, sending goods in time, validated that the goods were received, giving all informations I own. I decided to stop the process.
The end of the story : I’ve talked to the customer, he gave me the name of his bank, after some times they found that they issued a bunch of chargebacks for a stolen card. Our paiement was in the batch for no reason. The bank paid us directly.
What Paymill as done for me: nothing, how much did it cost: $25 (and many many time)
And guess what ? just after that great experience, I received an email from Paymill, the subject was “New Credorax risk and chargeback policy”, I will not detail the content here, you will think of a joke.
Last days with Paymill
Paymill stopped our MOTO feature. MOTO means mail order/ telephone order. The day they did it, I’ve received an email with “for security reason, we stopped MOTO for your account”. We use MOTO to charge with a new transaction an already processed card, we don’t have access to the card number, it’s great. Our business case is when we receive a last minute call from a customer asking to add a good to his order, we add the good, and just charge the card for an additional amount, card number is kept secret. It’s a good service, quick, secure and painless for the customer. This feature is the one that make us go with Paymill (vs traditionnal providers we have in France). I’ve asked Paymill about the problem we have with MOTO, they just answered that we can not use it as a virtual terminal. I’ve asked again, may be a problem of understanding between us, strange answers, support service does not know why, really… they have a RISK service, that I can not talk to, they decided. They may have good reasons that I will never know. But I can not trust them more. I don’t need a payment provider that stop a feature without any advice.
we are now looking for an other payment provider.
Thanks for reading, sorry for my english, I know it’s far from perfect.
Pierre
muacan
Paymill is a great payment system for any developer and/or startup.
However, if you are accepting payments in another currency than euro, their partner bank Wirecard Bank is not nice and will get you the worse rates. Also never forget-at least in some countries- they will make the payment in Euro not in your currency and due to converting your local currency to Euro with a bad rate, and then sending you Euro, than converting again you make a loss of about 5-10%.
Adding to that, wirecard bank’s transparency is very bad. For example, in our last payment they paid 16,5% less than they declared, citing the intermediary bank costs as reason. However, their agreement states that the bank will only get 2.95%. The reason for the extra 16,5% fees? Still waiting an answer.
Hope to live in a world were we loose the greedy banking system with hidden fees and bad transparency.
Nikoletta Ven
Dear Mr. Parker,
The information listed above is not showing the real service rating/review of Paymill.
I have bad experience with them, because they have published misleading information about the business models they support and my project wasted time and money due to their unprofessional attitude. I cannot agree that a ¨reliable¨ payment provider with ¨transparent terms¨ will put off its clients with empty promises, or will reject an application without giving clear explanations for that.
The contract manager of Paymill just sent me an email with this standpoint ¨We regret that we cannot disclose specific details on the evaluation process.¨
Regards,
Nikoletta V.