by Ben Dwyer Chase Paymentech is one of the largest payment processors operating today, processing over 25 billion transactions each year. If you’re looking to take credit cards for the first time or thinking about switching processors, you’ve probably come across them.
Here, we’ll provide a thorough review of Chase Paymentech, including information on credit card processing services, Paymentech’s fees and pricing models, customer service, and opinions from former customers.
- History
- News
- What does Chase Paymentech do?
- Security
- Chase Paymentech Rates and Fees
- What about contracts?
- Customer Service
- Chase Paymentech Reviews
History
Chase Paymentech was founded in 1985 in Dallas, Texas and has offices in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The company is an international processor, but for the purposes of this article we’ll focus on services available to businesses based in the United States.
News
In January of 2016, Chase announced the sale of its ISO portfolio to First American Payment Systems. If your credit card processing was previously through a Chase Paymentech ISO, it will now be through First American.
In August of 2016, Chase announced “express funding” for credit card transactions. Businesses that sign up for a merchant account through Chase Paymentech and connect a Chase business checking account may be eligible for next-day funding. (Next-day funding doesn’t apply on weekends or holidays.)
What does Chase Paymentech do?
Chase Paymentech can help you take payments in almost any way you can think of. Chase offers card processing, check processing, processing through smartphones and tablets, payment acceptance from international customers, e-commerce processing, and virtual terminals for taking payments by mail, phone, or fax.
Card Processing and Equipment
Chase Paymentech lets you easily take all major credit cards, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. You can also accept both PIN and signature debit cards.
Chase Paymentech has many credit card machines available and can also process cards with tablets. Chase offers popular brands Ingenico and VeriFone credit card terminals. Features vary depending on the model, but may include EMV chip card capability and contactless payment acceptance so you can take payments from newer technologies like Apple Pay.
Check Processing
For accepting checks, Chase Paymentech offers electronic check processing to convert checks into secure, fast electronic transactions. Checks are converted at the time of sale and the service is available for both US and Canadian currency. Electronic check processing means you won’t need to make a trip to the bank to deposit paper checks.
Mobile Processing
If you’re regularly taking payments on the go, you’re probably interested in mobile card processing. With Chase Paymentech’s mobile processing, you can accept payments using your smartphone or tablet with internet connection and the Chase Mobile Checkout app. If you want, you can also attach card readers to swipe credit cards instead of hand keying customers’ card information.
If you’d prefer to use a laptop on-the-go, Chase Paymentech provides iTerminal for card-present transactions using an attachable card reader.
E-Commerce and Virtual Terminals
If you want to accept payments online through your website or take payments for mail and phone orders, Chase Paymentech has several options.
Orbital virtual terminal
Virtual terminals are internet-based payment forms that let you process transactions from your existing computer. You’ll need internet access and the Orbital app.
PayPal
Chase Paymentech has an integrated PayPal option that lets you easily accept PayPal payments.
Orbital payment gateway
Think of the payment gateway as the credit card machine of websites. In a store, your customers swipe their card through a credit card machine to be processed. Online, they’ll “swipe” it virtually by entering their payment information to be processed through the online gateway.
Hosted Payment Pages
Orbital hosted payment pages are a great option for convenient and secure payment processing in your e-commerce website. The Orbital hosted pages let you integrate a secure checkout form that is hosted by Chase Paymentech, meaning that sensitive transaction data stays with Chase, not on your system. Keeping information secure with Chase Paymentech means easier PCI compliance, and more security for you and your customers. Even better, the hosted payment pages can be customized to match your existing website for a seamless experience for your customers.
Foreign Payment Acceptance
If you do business with international customers, Chase Paymentech can help by giving you the ability to accept payments in 130 currencies, including the Euro, allowing transactions from any of the European Union countries that use Euros. Additionally, you can take JCB cards that are popular with Japanese customers, and Maestro, popular with many European customers.
Security
Chase Paymentech gives you a suite of security and fraud prevention services with your processing account. Chase utilizes Safetech encryption to ensure secure transactions at the time they’re made, helping you meet advanced PCI compliance standards.
Chase Paymentech Rates and Fees
Most of the time, Chase Paymentech doesn’t publish rates or fees on their website. No problem! To find out what you’d pay to process credit cards with Chase Paymentech, simply request a confidential quote through your CardFellow account. If you don’t have a CardFellow account, you can sign up for free.
Limited Offers
Occasionally, Chase Paymentech promotes limited time specialty pricing. For example, in April 2018, Chase Paymentech offered a flat rate of 2.75% for new customers as seen in thsi screenshot from Chase’s website.
The deal included a free credit card machine, which the fine print clarified is an Ingenico iCT250. Fine print also specified that the 2.75% flat rate applies to swiped credit and non-PIN debit transactions. It mentions that PIN debit and ecommerce transactions are not included.
What about contracts?
In some cases, Chase offers month-to-month terms with no cancellation fees. Seasonal downtime may also be available if you’re not processing cards all year round. Even with processors that promise no cancellation fees, be sure to read your contract thoroughly and check that it states in writing that there are no charges for cancelling.
Contract terms may vary for limited time or specialty pricing.
Customer Service
When deciding on a payment processor, customer service is an often overlooked but important piece of the puzzle. Fortunately, Chase Paymentech has a variety of options for support. Customer service is available from 7am – 7pm central time Monday – Friday.
Additionally, Chase provides how-to videos and guides for using the terminals provided by Chase, a FAQ page, information for how to read your Chase statements and an explanation of fees.
Chase Paymentech Reviews
Chase Paymentech has been processing credit cards for long enough to have a variety of reviews available online. For the most part, negative reviews are minimal considering the company’s size, but details of the complaints found at the BBB, Yelp, and Ripoff Report are included here to give a full picture. It’s also important to remember that one person’s review may not be the same experience that you have.
The Better Business Bureau
As of autumn 2015, Chase Paymentech is not accredited with the Better Business Bureau, but does have a profile with the BBB and boasts an A+ rating. Chase Paymentech has had 35 complaints lodged with the BBB in the past 3 years, with 6 closed in the past year. That’s a pretty low number of complaints considering Chase’s size and number of clients.
The majority of the complaints (18) are in the category “Problems with Product/Service.” 15 complaints are in the “Billing/Collection Issues” category. 1 complaints are in the “Advertising/Sales Issues” category, and 1 complaint is in the “Delivery Issues” category.
Complaints allege improper collection practices, a failure to correct billing errors, unauthorized charges, and failure to honor contracts as agreed.
17 complaints are listed as resolved to the complainant’s satisfaction. The remaining 18 complaints are listed as “answered” meaning that Chase Paymentech responded to the complaint but after that the BBB either didn’t hear back from the business that complained, or the business wasn’t happy with Chase Paymentech’s proposed resolution.
There are currently no customer reviews for Chase Paymentech on the Better Business Bureau website.
Yelp and Ripoff Report
Yelp lists 3 reviews for Chase Paymentech in Dallas; two reviews are 1-star, and one review is 5-stars, bringing the average rating to 2.5 stars. The negative reviews complain of excess fees, and not being serviced as agreed. The positive review praises the company and says they provide great prices with no hidden fees and provide 24/7 customer service.
Ripoff Report shows 18 reports in their complaint directory. Reviews complain of deceptive business practices, hidden fees, improperly holding funds, and unhelpful customer service.
Chase Paymentech Customers
Chase Paymentech has a selection of customer success stories on their website. Customers praise the easy transaction processing and report saving money with Chase’s services. Customer success stories include the business name and reviewer name.
CardFellow’s Experience with Chase Paymentech
From what we’ve seen over the years, Chase Paymentech has proven to be the most transparent and competitive of the large bank processors. Of course, other large banks such as Wells Fargo Merchant Services and Bank of America Merchant Services don’t exactly set the bar very high.
Chase Paymentech uses bundled surcharge pricing, tiered pricing, or interchange plus. The general format of its statements remains consistent, and it doesn’t gouge businesses with equipment leases like many of its other big bank counterparts.
Pricing
From our experience, Chase uses three different pricing models to bill businesses for processing charges. The luckier clients are billed via an interchange-plus model, and the less fortunate pay higher fees via bundled surcharge and tiered pricing.
Bundled surcharging
Bundled surcharge pricing is similar to tiered pricing in that a processor uses interchange categories to charge a business rather than allowing the business to pay the actual cost of interchange.
We refer to bundled surcharging as its own pricing model because each interchange category often has its own surcharge amount, which makes the number of surcharges or would-be tiers equal to the number of interchange categories.
Bundled surcharging can be very misleading to the untrained eye due to the fact that interchange categories are itemized and it can be mistaken for more competitive interchange-plus pricing.
For example, the snippet below is taken from a Chase Paymentech statement where the business is being billed via a bundled surcharge pricing model.
As you can see from the statement, Chase has assigned a qualified rate of 1.93% to credit volume and 1.34% to debit volume. It then surcharges volume that runs through interchange categories that it does not feel qualifies for these two rates. Chase has complete control over which interchange categories are surcharged, and by how much.
To calculate the total rate for a given interchange category the qualified rate must be added to the surcharge rate.
For example, the total rate charged for the category called “World Elite Merit I” in the statement below is 2.85%, which is 1.93% qualified plus 0.92% surcharge.
Like many processors, Chase tends to favor bundled pricing and tiered pricing, which I’ll cover next.
Tiered Pricing
Chase’s tiered pricing works much like the bundled pricing explained above with the main difference being the number of surcharge categories.
Processors set pricing and terms on a per-case basis, and they can structure pricing the same way. Many processors prefer to structure tiered pricing using three tiers, but we’ve found that chase prefers to use nine tiers, and sometimes twelve.
The more common three-tier model groups all interchange categories into tiers called qualified, mid-qualified, and non-qualified. Chase’s preferred method creates these three tiers for credit and debit, and sometimes takes it one step further by creating separate tiers for credit reward and credit commercial interchange categories. The result is as many as twelve individual tiers.
For example, the snippet below is taken from a Chase Paymentech tiered pricing statement. As you can see, there are separate tiers for credit, debit, and reward credit volume, resulting in nine possible individual tiers (three for each group).
As we explain in detail in our article about tiered pricing, it’s far more beneficial to processors than to businesses. Tiered pricing is opaque, since you can’t necessarily tell what types of transactions will qualify for which tier, and it is often far more expensive than other forms of pricing, such as interchange plus.
Interchange-Plus
When Chase uses interchange-plus pricing it clearly discloses interchange categories and lists its markup as a separate line item that it refers to as “sales discount.”
For example, the snippet below is taken from a Chase Paymentech interchange-plus statement. We’ve removed a few interchange rows to make the snippet a little smaller and more manageable for this post. The first few rows clearly show the name of the interchange category, the sales volume in the category, the number of transactions, and then the resulting rate, transaction fee, and total charge. The last row is Chase’s markup.
This snippet is much more transparent than the previous examples, as it provides details for each transaction type and charge.
Refunds
A noteworthy point about Chase Paymentech is that it’s one of the few processors to return interchange fees on refund transactions, meaning that when businesses refund money to a customer, Chase Paymentech refunds interchange fees to the business. As we’ve explained in detail in this article, most processors do not return the fees refunded at interchange to a business when it issues a refund.
The snippet below is taken from a Chase interchange-plus statement and shows that the business issued a refund of $12. As you can see from the statement, Chase is allowing the business to receive interchange credits for refunds.
They don’t always do it, but we’ve noticed it relatively more on Chase interchange-plus statements than other processors.
At CardFellow, interchange refunds are a requirement for certified quotes placed through our marketplace. If you choose your processor through CardFellow, you will benefit from interchange refunds when you refund payment to a customer. We’d like to see Chase Paymentech (and other processors) commit to regularly refunding interchange fees when businesses issue refunds to customers, but we do acknowledge that Chase Paymentech is a step ahead of many processors since they do sometimes issue interchange refunds.
The Bottom Line
Chase Paymentech has the ability to offer you a competitive processing solution, or a not-so-competitive solution. Sign up to request a quote from Chase Paymentech through CardFellow to see how their offer for your specific business stacks up.
