PaymentSpring Review

In this PaymentSpring review, we’ll take a look at the company’s services, reputation, and costs to help you determine if it’s a good fit for your business’ processing needs.

• About the Company
• In Their Own Words
• Services
  • Mobile Payments
  • Online Payments
• Chargebacks, Security, and PCI Compliance
• Rates and Fees
  • Sales Channels
• Equipment
• PaymentSpring Reviews

About the Company

PaymentSpring is a collaboration between two other companies – Nelnet and Firespring. While started by Firespring, the company was acquired by Nelnet and relaunched. In 2014, Nelnet Business Solutions (NBS) spun off Nelnet Transaction Solutions to its own business unit. At the end of 2016, NTS rebranded to PaymentSpring when it added a new payment gateway to its solutions mix.

Student loan borrowers may know Nelnet, one of the largest student loan servicers. Firespring operates as a design and development firm. PaymentSpring is a registered independent sales organization of First National Bank of Omaha and Wells Fargo.

In Their Own Words

PaymentSpring provided this explanation to CardFellow:

PaymentSpring is a developer-driven payment provider that specializes in making payments easy.

• Easy for the developers or web resources who add payments to their existing solutions.
• Easy for customers who make payments or donations.
• Easy for those who manage the business payments with a user-friendly dashboard and convenient payment tools.

Clients choose from an array of integration options, including:

• Full customization, using our API. User-friendly dev docs on our site provide all the details.
• WooCommerce plug-ins
• Copy/paste simplicity using our Checkout Widgets, where you answer a few questions, and your form builds as you go, generating a single line of code to add to your website.

PaymentSpring stands out with features including:

• Add mobile payments that feed right into your dashboard, for a consolidated view of your payments.
• Recurring payments
• Electronic invoicing
• ACH payment option
• Donor-covered fees option for nonprofits

PaymentSpring is a level 1 PCI certified vendor, which means your data is secure with PaymentSpring. And our service team is top-notch. Live support is available from a team that knows their stuff.  They love to help.

Trying the features of our gateway is easy – just a few seconds and you are logged into a sandbox that lets you make sample checkout buttons and forms, make payments, and more.

Services

PaymentSpring offers payment processing capabilities for in-person credit and debit card transactions using a mobile card reader or online with its gateway solution. The company can also reprogram some credit card machines, such as Ingenico terminals. You can also choose to accept EBT cards.  

The company does not offer some of the common related services like gift card programs. 

While it can serve a variety of tradtional businesses such as general retailers, PaymentSpring also serves specialty businesses, including nonprofits, educational services, religious groups, insurance, business services, and farmer’s markets.

For paying fees, the company offers a choice of daily or monthly discounting, meaning you can elect to have fees taken out of your transactions each day or once per month. You'll also benefit from next-day deposits at no additional charge. 

Mobile Payments

The mobile payment app is available for both Android and Apple devices, and includes an online dashboard for viewing transaction details. You’ll also have the option to email a receipt to your customers at the time of purchase. PaymentSpring offers this video showing the mobile acceptance option:

Online Payments

The online option allows you the choice of using the Checkout Widget to create a checkout form without programming knowledge. You’ll create the form by answering a few questions, and will then be able to accept both one-time and recurring payments from either credit cards or ACH transfers.

PaymentSpring also offers Gravity Forms and WooCommerce plugins to help you integrate online payment acceptance into your website. If you’d prefer to send invoices to clients, you can create and send electronic invoices that customers can pay online directly from their invoice. You can choose whether to accept partial payments or require full payment.

On PaymentSpring's website, a demo version lets you check out the dashboard and payment options. As you can see from the screenshot below, a simple options panel lets you choose what you need. 

The main dashboard screen shows your running total of transactions, as well as the volume you've accepted and the average payment amount. From there, you can also dig deeper into individual transactions, or quickly process full or partial refunds. 

In the screenshot below, you can see that there's a tab with simple options for refunding. 

When testing out the options, we found PaymentSpring's dashboard to be user-friendly and intuitive. 

Chargebacks, Security, and PCI Compliance

PaymentSpring offers the latest security features (including tokenization, encryption, and Captcha) standard with all accounts. Additionally, data breach protection is included at no additional charge. You’ll still need to ensure PCI compliance. If you need assistance meeting requirements, PaymentSpring works with Aperia to help you.  

In the event that your business receives a chargeback, PaymentSpring automatically generates forms that are sent to you electronically or by mail. The company has staff that monitors chargebacks to help resolves issues.
 

Rates and Fees

PaymentSpring offers flat rate pricing, similar to companies like Square or Stripe, but can also offer interchange plus, tiered, and automatic surcharge pricing. Read more about pricing models.  

As of 2018, flat rate costs are as follows: