Any reviews of "PaymentSense" Merchant Services

[i4detail]

We're currently using Cardnet Merchant Services but are looking to change for many reasons. Have been told about PaymentSense Merchant Services who appear to be cheaper and seem to be well organised. Has anyone any experience of them with/without Actinic?

[Sean Williams]

We're with Cardnet too - any particularly important reason for changing?
We don't have problems with them, but they're a complete pain in the butt to deal with.

[leehack]

We don't have problems with them, but they're a complete pain in the butt to deal with.

This did make me chuckle .

[Sean Williams]

On re-reading, me too

[i4detail]

Retention delay

The main reason to change from Cardnet is that they have a 15 working days retention period before the money goes into our Lloyds account. This is proving to be an absolute cash flow disaster for us.

[Mike Hughes]

I'd call them up and ask them to change it. It would seem they do offer a faster service and it probably depends on your history with them

When will I receive settlement?
You should receive funds within your business bank account 4 working days after the transaction, if the settlement is made in sterling.

http://www.lloydstsbcardnet.com/faq.asp

Mike

[cbarling]

If you've been going for a while they should be prepared to drop that. Have you asked them?

Chris

[Sean Williams]

Me too - we receive our money within 3 bizz days usually.

[i4detail]

After three days of trying to get hold of the person at Cardnet, they are adamant that they will not make any changes until we have a full year of trading with them.
They stress that the retention is demanded by the insurance underwriters and not Cardnet.
We are now actively looking at other providers.
Any suggestions/recommendations welcome.

[Darren B]

the usual

Streamline and AP for me all the way - it works although i have never had the need to contact support

[Duncan Rounding]

Likewise - same as Darren - and if your an FSB member you'll get cheaper rates and setup fees with Streamline.

[i4detail]

Thank you all for your input. We've gone with Cardsave / Streamline who offered best rates & service (as far as we know).

[mje]

Does anyone have any practical experience with PaymentSense?

We have used Streamline / Actinic Payments for a while now (rates through a trade association of 1.6% CC and 22p debit cards)

However had a visit form PaymentSense offering 1.1% and 13p - terminal rental same as Streamline.

Did quick Google of the company and they don't get very good reviews overall !

The term is 5 years "capped" which is along time to be tied in, but the rates so long as there is nothing in the small print (streamline says there is) are attractive.

Thoughts?

[fleetwood]

I switched from Streamline to Payment Sense at the start of the year.
Great rates
Very quick switchover - all approved and set up within days, including adding new MOTO account we didn't have before. The sign up process was mainly done online, and then documents were sent by courier and collected at their expense - all same day.
The POS terminal is far better than the standard Streamline one, as it connects via broadband, rather than dial up. Apart from being far quicker, this cuts out the extra 3.5p per call authorisation fee that Streamline were hitting us with.
No problem intergrating with AP
Very pleased so far

That 1.1% / 13p sounds like a great rate - even better than I achieved after heavy negotiation!

The only thing to watch, is that they try to sign you up for 'extras', when you go through the initial sign up process. Just stick to your guns, and only take what you actually want. My salesguy insisted that I signed up for ClientLine (£10 per month), giving online access to transactions data, and said I simply needed to phone up and cancel it after we were approved. Its how they make extra commision. This is cheeky and a bit of a pain, but not difficult to cancel.

Regarding 'the small print' - it looks like there is a cancellation fee of £200 or so, if you close the account early, so you have to weigh up with you can live with your rates being capped at a far lower rate than Streamline, or if you think you may cancel within the short term! I'm guessing they may do this to safeguard any commission that the card company (First Data) have paid over to Payment Sense, for getting the business. The salesmen are very 'keen'.

[Sean Williams]

We're currently with Secure Hosting and Cardnet.
Cardnet are a bunch of so-and-so's and we're keen to leave asap, not least because they have started hitting us with a monthly charge because we don't want to jump through their irrelevant PCI DSS hoops.

PaymentSense sounds good on the face of it - payment processing and merchant account all in one package, with the merchant account effectively free, plus competitive rates.

On chatting with them, they say they've contacted Actinic for the information they need to produce the module necessary to integrate with Actinic checkout, but Actinic have responded negatively, saying they weren't producing any more integration modules.

Does anyone at Actinic have anything to say about that please?

Also - Martin, how have you managed to make it work with your system, or are you Terminal only?

Any help gratefully received.

Cheers