We were at a conference recently with 250 other companies who sell credit card processing services. We’d like to call them our peers, but our credit card processing services are completely different such that we’re apologetic to have to call them our competitors. We were both shocked by what we heard from these other companies and re-invigorated that we are on the right path to help merchants escape from these unscrupulous sales organizations.
We found ourselves in a room with middle aged men who would look more at home on a used car lot than in a hotel conference center. Yes the comb-over was prevalent, but worst of all the dodgy sales tactics were overflowing.
Here’s one that takes the cake – At Leap Payments we refuse to lease equipment to our clients, simply because it’s a bad deal for the client. We gladly post our prices for equipment on our website, starting at $199 for a basic terminal. Because you can acquire the equipment for so little, leasing the same equipment for $25 a month is predatory pricing and we simply won’t do it.
So we were shocked when a competitor proudly announced to us that they had found a way to lease Virtual Merchant access. Virtual Merchant is a website for clients who take orders on the phone or have e-commerce websites; they can use Virtual Merchant to enter credit card transactions without the need for a terminal. So, in essence Virtual Merchant is a website that we’ll provide a user id and password so our clients can perform transactions. This competitor was proud to tell us that they “lease” access to Virtual Merchant for $23 per month to their clients. WHAT??? They “lease” access to a publicly available website? This is on top of a monthly fee to use Virtual Merchant.
The economics of this are scandalous. The competitor is signing the client up to pay $23 per month for 48 months which adds up to $1,104, for nothing. This is pure profit for the agent and purely disgraceful tactic to pad their bottom line.
We hope that you have not fallen prey to tactics like these as we work hard every day to educate our clients and provide honestly better payment processing services. Never lease your credit card processing equipment; we can help you along a better path.
